SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland — Many school administrators in western Jamaica are confident that they are ready if COVID-19 is tamed long enough for face-to-face classes to resume in September. Most are eager to have students return to the classrooms of old, before the novel coronavirus upended everything.

Irwin High in St James is among the schools that have been preparing, for months, to once again open its doors.

“We started these preparations in May. A number of teachers have already taken the vaccine, and at Irwin High, the teachers really show a great deal of interest in students’ learning. I think they will take the decision to return if it is possible,” Principal Victor Newsome told the Jamaica Observer.

The education ministry has long signalled that the goal is a blended approach to learning, with face-to-face classes offered where possible.

According to Region Four director at the Ministry of Education, Dr Michele Pinnock, her office has been in continuous dialogue with principals and board chairs across the region regarding the reopening of schools. They have also been working closely with the Ministry of Health and Wellness to get schools re-inspected to ensure they are safe. So far the results have been satisfactory, she said.

Axe-and-Adze Early Childhood Institution in Hanover has already been given the green light by public health inspectors, according to Principal Claudette Sommerville-Murray. Her team, she added, is eagerly awaiting the school’s reopening.

Online classes have been less than smooth in their community that has limited access to WiFi.

“We’re having issues with online classes because a lot of the parents cannot afford to [consistently] buy data to put on their phones. In fact, most parents are still using the ‘banger’ phone and this is a poor community,” she explained.

Despite the current spike in COVID-19 cases in many parishes, Sommerville-Murray believes schools located in communities like hers, which have very little cases, should be allowed to have face-to-face classes as long as the protocols are observed.

In Westmoreland — one of the parishes hardest hit during the ongoing third wave — Savanna-la-Mar Infant School teacher Bevene Brown-Francis is ready to engage her students face-to-face, but she is concerned about the large number of COVID-19 cases.

“I want school to be reopened and I want to go back face-to-face. But, given the situation, we have to… consider our children as well as our teachers,” she said. She is not opposed to continuing with online lessons if needed.

Like Brown-Francis, caregiver Trecia McFarlane is confident in the readiness of the school’s physical infrastructure. She said their principal, Praise Thompson-Brown, had put plans in place for resumption of classes in October last year.

“The signs are there [and] the security guards are there doing checks. Even the other day we had a meeting and we had to go through the whole sanitation process and temperature checks. So yes, I think the infrastructure is up to par,” she said. “Even before COVID, the classrooms were being sanitised up to six times per day so I have no doubt this will be increased if we go back,” she added.

However, McFarlane is particularly concerned that some teachers and caregivers like her may not be mentally ready for the return of face-to-face classes. The memory of this June’s bout with COVID-19 is still fresh in her mind and she is concerned that many parents are not yet vaccinated.

“Personally, I’m not ready to go back into the classroom because the rates have gone up by far and, as the prime minister said, we have to brace ourselves for the third wave. When I think about it, we can’t be ready for mid-September. We’re not mentally prepared,” she told the Observer. “Yes, we would want to [get out of the house] but we would not want to do that and put our lives and the lives of our children at risk.”

The Government has been pushing to get the educational system back on track amid concern that the longer studies are interrupted the more likelihood of irreparable damage being done. A mid-September start is later than the norm but still earlier than last year when COVID-19 first struck.

“Last year we actually started in the first week of October and what we did was we used September for professional development. So I am sure that once again the two weeks or so in September before our students will begin class — whether virtual or face-to-face — we will be using that for professional development and preparing for teaching and learning,” said the MOE’s Dr Pinnock.