JANELLE BERNARD

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), An­to­nia De Fre­itas, is strong­ly ad­vis­ing par­ents to in­stil in their chil­dren the im­por­tance of ob­serv­ing all the COVID-19 health pro­to­cols—in­clud­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing—when schools are re­opened on a phased ba­sis in Feb­ru­ary.

De Fre­itas says en­sur­ing there is no spread of the COVID-19 virus is a mat­ter of per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and stu­dents must do their part.

“Par­ents must re­it­er­ate these fac­tors to stu­dents, be­cause we would not want to em­bark up­on this phased re­open­ing and then we have to close school be­cause we have cas­es mount­ing, or be­cause we recog­nise that stu­dents—in the sec­ondary lev­el es­pe­cial­ly—are not do­ing what they are sup­posed to do," the teach­ers union boss said.

TTUTA notes while teach­ers will re­turn to school, on­ly as re­quired, they are still very con­cerned about re­turn­ing to the phys­i­cal space.

An­to­nia De Fre­itas al­so points out that while they wel­come the pro­posed Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit, there are some chal­lenges.

“This will be staffed, in the first in­stance, by the doc­tors and the 14 nurs­es pro­ject­ed,” she ob­served.  

“We un­der­stand it is crit­i­cal for all per­sons in the school en­vi­ron­ment to feel safe.  How­ev­er, our con­cern will be the ac­cess, giv­en the ge­og­ra­phy of some schools,” the TTUTA pres­i­dent un­der­scored.

Schools are sched­uled to re­open on a phased ba­sis on Mon­day Feb­ru­ary 8th, with on­ly Forms Four, Five and Six stu­dents at­tend­ing when nec­es­sary.

Stan­dard Five stu­dents will re­turn to their phys­i­cal class­rooms on Mon­day April 12th.