Online meet ups for school peers?

[MrsHookey]

My kids are really missing peers. I've had a child crying and the tears rolling down her cheek. Is there any way I can safely and securely set up online meetings for kids (ie with zoom)? I know school might feel worried about this but I'm on the PTA and feel we can maybe liaise with school to find some (safeguarded) way of kids communicating. I don't have a way of contacting all the kids in a class. And I don't have other parents' numbers. I only moved to this area not long ago. Any ideas?

Speak to the teachers. Ideally the best way would be just to arrange with other parents and leave the school out of it. If that isn’t possible, suggest it to school. My dc had a zoom chat with the whole class and teachers as have lots of friends. Some kids are doing whole days of learning on zoom (nightmare). Teams is more secure, but not as accessible depending on the licensing agreement with whoever owns it and can set up the call.

How old are your kids? Mine regularly meet with friends online and so do all the kids I know. It's just an informal thing arranged between ourselves.

I wouldn't do this through the school, just speak to the other parents your children are friends with

I don’t know really, I think you’d be excluding a group of children who are already more vulnerable, such as those who don’t have the tech and those who can’t be included for safeguarding reasons. Some children’s home lives are truly awful and you’d be potentially exposing your child to that as well as the bullying of individual children. I’d steer clear and find other ways of supporting your child. Sorry they are so upset though.

Just do it. Whole class is difficult though - maybe try a group of friends first. It’s hard to be heard in a zoom call of 30 kids !

I doubt the school would facilitate this. Mine wouldn’t.
Possibly something you should have anticipated before lockdown and asked some other parents for their numbers?
Do you have a class parent rep?

My class have a forum facility on their online learning space to communicate and email each other (all emails come to me before they are sent to the intended recipient if I approve them, if not they get an email refusal message and if they abuse these the functions are disabled by the teacher and cease to work).
Do you not have access to anything like this?

If you don't have contact details for any of the parents then it's not going to be easy to set something up and I don't think many schools would take this on. You could try posting in local FB groups and asking people to put you in touch with parents from X class at Y school maybe although it seems strange to be on the PTA and have no details for other parents.
Alternatively, do you have phone numbers for parents of your DCs' friends where you used to live? Perhaps arranging for DCs to chat to non-school friends will help?