by Davide Rossi Secretary General SISA – The Minister of Education Lucia Azzolina speaks of “sabotage and blackmail of the union that threatens to paralyze school recovery”.
As much as we pay attention to the proposals of the other trade unions, it does not seem to us that they, as much as we do, have been moved by saboteurs.
Rather like SISA we are very worried because the whole lot of considerable size of fragile workers, that is over sixty or under the age of but afflicted by pathologies at risk (neoplasms, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, broncho-pneumopathies, deficiencies of the immune system and some others) it was not addressed in time, as we asked for last June.
Fragile workers pursuant to art. 83 DL 34 of 19 May 2020 and its conversion law of 17 July 2020, n. 77, within the framework of the “Exceptional health surveillance”, as confirmed by the Ministry of Education on 6 August 2020 with the “Security Protocol”, may, pursuant to letter L, be declared pro tempore unsuitable by a doctor chosen by the institution school and not enter the classroom.
How many teachers and ATA are we talking about? 20%, 25% of the staff? More? Less? We asked in June for a monitoring that would clarify and avoid confusion, giving the educational institutions all the time to organize the service with substitute staff adequately recruited in advance. All this did not happen.
As SISA we had in fact predicted that teachers and fragile ATAs were placed on sick leave for nine months, from ministerial interpretations it seems instead that they will all be placed at home, operating with Distance Learning, excellent decision, teleworking for ATAs and activities online teaching offered by the teachers will be a precious resource, however there remain many doubts, because if theirs will be an “more” job than in the classroom it will be wonderful, but for an “extra” job we need immediate appointments of alternates for all these workers, if instead it will be a job “instead of that in the classroom”, we believe we will face the most catastrophic season of public school.
To be clear, let’s make some practical and concrete examples.
In a school – primary or secondary it changes little – there are classes A, B, C and D, in the first two the teachers are on duty, in C and D instead they are not in class because they are fragile.
What happens at this point? The students of A and B go to school, while C and D stay at home – since substitutes have not been appointed – and follow at a distance? Or do healthy teachers split up over all four classes, so A, B, C and D work the same hours at school, maybe until mid-morning, then go home to follow the DAD with the frail? And didactic continuity? Are we sure that the parents of classes A and B calmly accept this situation? Another hypothesis, the head teacher communicates to the families of classes A, B, C, D that he can guarantee only two classes in the presence and the other two at a distance, so the parents, no matter if the classes will be dismembered, must choose between the two. choices, with a reformulation of the groups on a voluntary basis, which, we are sure, will not fail to create a colossal chaos and many discontent.
We insist on underlining the problem of the fragile because it seems to us of great numerical and practical importance and in some respects even more urgent than that of the meters of distance, of the masks, of the single-student desks with or without wheels, of the plexiglass dividers, of the thermo-detectors.
The increased staff must be used to cover the extra classes remedied in the lecture halls and gyms (we had also proposed disused barracks, but also in this case we were not heard), at the moment it does not cover the possible replacement of the fragile ones, also because in service, albeit in DAD.
Italian teachers and ATAs are among the oldest in Europe, having forgotten it is serious, asking people over 60 and chronically ill to go to class anyway is impossible, for their health, that of their colleagues and their students, they must absolutely stay home. So it is completely unknown to us what will happen from September 1st, when thousands and thousands of applications from fragile workers will arrive on the desks of school leaders.
Reminding the minister that it seems serious to us to have underestimated the fragile does not seem sabotage, but on the contrary an act of full and concrete responsibility.
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