INTERVIEW
Should all schools be reopened as of May 11? The question is constantly debated. Especially since according to some mayors, this reopening is impossible on the date set by the government. A point of view shared by Sylvine Thomassin, mayor of Bondy and secretary general of the Association of Mayors of Île-de-France (AMIF). In her city of Seine-Saint-Denis, primary and elementary schools "will not open until May 18 at best," she said at the microphone of Europe 1.
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A one week extended closure as there is still a lot to do. The masks intended for the personnel of the National education have not yet been received but should soon be. For children, these are visor headbands that have been privileged, more suitable and easier to wash and disinfect. "We also need to organize traffic, wandering, so that children respect distances and above all that adults who will take turns around children can take health recommendations. And it is not done in two or three days ", warns Sylvine Thomassin.
"We have therefore planned to devote the week of May 11 to 15 so that adults can see each other and prepare in pre-school the reasonable reception conditions for a return from May 18, but it will have to be very progressive and very sweet ", concludes the one who is also spokesperson for the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) and president of the education commission at the AMF.
"We were not associated with this health protocol"
"We cannot say that we are ready" sums up Sylvine Thomassin. According to her, the 35,000 mayors of France need time to read, understand and implement the national health protocol received only Thursday. "We will have to do local landing work in our schools which are, by definition, all different. We will take the time it takes to visit each of the schools, to lay down the health protocol in each of they then send this protocol to the French Ministry of Education ", she explains, clarifying that the mayors do not want to" bear civil and criminal responsibility that we do not have to have ".
"Health security is the role of the State and we have not been associated with this health protocol." Conversely, Sylvine Thomassin ensures that most mayors work with the parents of students, school directors, animators, and school doctors.
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Pupils to be brought back to school as a priority
Despite all these difficulties, the reopening of primary and elementary schools and the return to the benches of students remain a priority for the mayor of the city of 93. She also deplored a month ago, in a forum, that the school in Seine-Saint-Denis had lost track of 25 to 35% of students from disadvantaged neighborhoods. "This figure is perhaps a little lower now. In primary school, I assess it at around 500 children in a city which educates 7,300 in kindergarten and elementary school. It is 500 too many and these we will have to do everything to approach them, that they come back to school. This is our priority, "she insists.
Among the priority children, the AMF spokesperson also cites those living in small apartments with only one computer per family but also those whose parents will have to work. Sylvine Thomassin specifies that a large part of those who continued to work during the confinement, the nursing staff in nursing homes, supermarket cashiers, delivery men, paramedics, live in 93.