Back to School, self isolation and pods

[Thewoodstar]

So, just had a letter from school outlining what they have planned for September. School have been fabulous and I can’t see that they can do anymore. The teachers have been brilliant and I thank them all.

However I am concerned about sending DC back. They will be in pods of their class. But sharing bathrooms with other year groups. Hand washing is unsupervised. And just the smell from the boys bathroom is at the end of the day Gives me zero confidence in any hand hygiene.

However my primary concern is the families of other children in the pod. I am confident school will do whatever they can to keep everyone safe. And life isn’t without risk. I get that.
But having spent the last 12 weeks watching older children or siblings from my child’s school, hanging about at the beach, in parks etc. No social distancing whatsoever. Massive big groups. The adults freely having parties and bbqs etc has made me worry. I know it’s all subjective and I have been using my parents for childcare as I had to have several hospital appointments, And I have now started meeting others. So I’m by no means overly anxious or the corona police . But I guess I am just worried that we are at the mercy of all these families who don’t have anyone vulnerable and don’t care about the rest of us. And even without the risk to health, if we have to keep self isolating because our children have been at school in a pod with someone who is symptomatic, are the parents of the said child going to financially compensate all the self employed people who won’t be able to work or get paid? I guess once schools in back, if people decide to ignore the social distancing advice etc, they are making decisions not the whole class and not just themselves. Which seems wrong.

Am I missing something?

At my reception childs school she was in bubble if ten and the teachers still touched her dispite extremely low levels of return to be as safe as possible.

Also at my sons school they still closed the entire school when one bubble had a positive case.

However careful school is the risks will be there. I do feel for you if your also seeing other pupils families increasing that risk.

On balance we have to live with this long term so the only realistic option is to home school if that personal risk is too big. But that could be for months or years.

We cant control others re risk taking. That's become obvious

There are approx 250 in dd's school. The whole school will be one bubble.

@TheFallenMadonna

Because my school is small, we are allowed to be one bubble. So not a bubble at all. Just a school.

@TheFallenMadonna out of interest, how big is your school?

Yes OP, absolutely. I know what we’ve done and how careful we’ve been, but it feels like it’s all gone to pot when dd then goes back to school and mixes with a class of children where many haven’t been distancing and careful and I have to trust that their parents will keep them off if exhibiting symptoms when a number send their children into school sick without regard for other children.

I know it varies in different parts of the UK, but where I am right now, the Zoe app reckons there are 360 active cases for every 1,000,000 people. That translates to 1 in every 2,777 people. The risk is LOW, even with people not SD/playing by the rules. Covid is not lurking around every corner for us, despite what the media would like us to think.

If that very very very low risk is still too high for you, then dont send your kids back.

Well going by the families in my neighbourhood who's children will be in my child's school bubble I predict she will be asked to stay home more than she's allowed to attend ! All throughout this pandemic they have held parties ,babysat for each other and just continued their lives as normal but then when asked if their children wanted to return to school on June the first they all refused as it wasn't safe 🤔😡.