Give schools a break

We need to give schools a break. They are forced to find a perfect balance between trying to educate our children, keep them and the teachers safe, adhere to the sometimes confusing and always changing regulations, all while staying afloat financially.

They have unenviable and impossible decisions to make. And they do this in the full knowledge that no matter what they decide, someone’s mom or dad or grandmother is likely to be outraged.

Ahead of the schools’ decision, the department of education was to meet to establish the approach for the country. The private schools were waiting for the outcome of this meeting before deciding what they would do. They had consulted their medical teams and their own principals and boards, but needed the ruling before informing parents.

This is the context in which I received a letter from our school informing us about the plan for the week. My daughter had been checking in with me in 15-minute intervals to see if we had heard from the school. She got wind of the fact that an email had dropped, and came running in to the room to ask me if school was starting or not.

While she stood there in eager anticipation, I read the email. Then I reread it and skimmed it one more time. I looked at her expectant face, and felt the failure that I knew I would be when I uttered the words, “Honestly, I have no idea.”

“But you are reading the email!” she shrieked as only a 16-year-old on the brink of maybe Grade 11 could do. “Yes,” I replied. “And I genuinely have no idea. Maybe ask mom.”

It should have taken just one reading of the school’s communique to realise that I wasn’t equipped to understand it without a master’s in engineering. It needed a methodical approach, maybe even some coloured pens if I was to get a grip on what it had decided. I thought initially that a quick Excel spreadsheet would assist me in figuring out which grades were going to school for orientation only, when they would be on campus, and when they wouldn’t be. It should then have been easy to see which years would go back full time and what the reasons were, as well as the dates of travel that would preclude children from doing so.

I whipped it together in no time at all, only to give up when I realised that I needed to introduce a new tab for hotspots, weddings, and illegal minyanim.

The communication shared by some of the private Jewish schools last week was a perfect representation of how challenging the task is. It illustrated above all else how hard they are trying in full knowledge that very few would be happy.

What’s remarkable is the expectation we seem to have of our schools. The truth is, no one knows what the next day will bring in terms of COVID-19. Also, there’s not a country or government in the world that has got this right. Add to that the fact that parents will lie to the school about their own behaviour, and you see how astounding it is just how high the bar has been set.

As parents, we need to take it down a notch. We need to take a moment to appreciate just how much the schools care, how hard they are trying, and applaud the unbelievable effort they put in to educate and care for our children. Even if we don’t always understand their emails.