Toulouse: a black Thursday in schools where teachers are called to strike against the health protocol
At the call of an inter-union teacher, school teachers, directors and directors are called on to strike this Thursday, January 13, to challenge yet another version of the health protocol which disrupts the functioning of establishments. A demonstration is planned in Toulouse, from 2 p.m.
Already that the situation is qualified as “chaotic” with classes which function with sometimes incomplete numbers, or even close because of positive absent teachers at the Omicron, it will not get better, this January 13, with the call the strike launched by several teachers’ unions (FSU, CGT educ’action, Unsa, Sud, MNL, FIDL, Snalc …) and supported by the FCPE. A Black Thursday in perspective. A demonstration is planned, from 2 p.m., departing from Place Arnaud Bernard in Toulouse.
After three health protocols in a week, the announcements Monday evening by Prime Minister Jean Castex which took everyone by surprise, the unions, including the Snuipp-FSU, do not spare their words to describe the situation: “chaos, ras- le-bol, anger, a feeling of abandonment, contempt, endangerment, exhaustion, and the many unthinkable aspects of the protocol. “.
The national union of school principals (# S2DE) is also stepping up to express “an unsustainable management” of the health crisis. In short, the confusion is beyond the playground and the return to class subject to three tests per week for contact cases.
Three self-tests for a return to class …
The FCPE 31 even evokes “a school in pieces”, in a press release: “With the economic, social and health crisis that our society is going through, after four years of a government policy which clearly does not place Education at the center of priorities of the country, the public school is in pieces, ”protests the federation.
To prevent contamination, the FCPE claims “real management of human resources”, “the installation of protective equipment in the classes: CO2 sensors, air purifiers, recourse to third places”, more campaigns of tests within schools and “more means for pedagogical continuity”. On the question of tests, precisely, incomprehension has spread to all floors of the Mammoth.
“Monday morning, I had already called all the parents in the class in an emergency, to explain the latest instructions in terms of health protocol to them, on Tuesday morning, I had to start again after the announcements from Castex”, confides , anonymous, a school director in Toulouse.
Welcoming the children of caregivers
On Friday January 7, the schools of Haute-Garonne had, moreover, been informed by the academic inspectorate and the Regional Health Agency (ARS) “that from Monday January 10″ the teaching teams should welcome ” the children of nursing staff throughout the department ”. Only pupils from the small section (kindergarten) to CM2.
Additional welcome which comes a little more to increase the load devolved on directors and directors forced to go it alone. “After three protocols in one week, 50 in 22 months, the urgency is to answer the parents’ questions, to the Covid cases that come to us, and since Monday and the announcements of Mr. Castex, the parents no longer know what to do with them. ‘you need a PCR test or a self-test, notes Charlotte Girardon, director of a nursery school in Plaisance-du-Touch and treasurer of # S2DE. We are waiting for directives from our hierarchy which do not arrive ”.
The headmistress, who says “works an average of 60 hours per week” and does class for half the week, is very often overwhelmed by the scale of the task, managing alone a school of 200 students. The health crisis has amplified the phenomenon.
“Even without a health crisis, we asked for administrative help,” adds Charlotte Girardon. However, when we are in class, the school administration does not stop. We can no longer disconnect, I have many colleagues in burnout. “
Discontent is also spreading to middle and high schools
Like schools, the proper functioning of colleges and high schools in Haute-Garonne is also impacted by the Omicron wave, which does not spare students. “In the Toulouse academy as elsewhere, the situation since the start of the January school year has been chaotic,” notes the Snes-FSU, the majority secondary union. The number of absent students explodes and learning is totally disorganized, with no possible pedagogical consistency from one course to another; the follow-up of contact cases has become impossible for overworked school lives; the protocol in force is indigent and uncertain, in practice limited to wearing a mask […] “. The Snes-FSU asks, in view of the health context, “that the report be announced without delay in June of the specialty tests” of the baccalaureate scheduled for March. “It would be necessary more than ever to put an end to the reductions of positions to meet the needs of the students and to ensure the replacements”, concludes the union.