67 private schools from Greater Santo Domingo, and one from Sosúa in Puerto Plata have asked for permission for a pilot in-person learning program that would have started 1 March 2021, as reported in Diario Libre. The Ministry of Education is not allowing in person learning except in municipalities where positivity rate is 5% or less starting 6 April 2021.
The president of the Business Action for Education (Educa) Samuel Conde is calling for the Ministry to reconsider and authorize the pilot programs.
Parents for In-Person Learning in the Dominican Republic (PPEPRD) complain that the government has authorized the reopening of bars, restaurants, gyms and parks but bans the return to in-person learning.
Mercedes Coronado of the Union of Private Education highlighted the negative effects youths and children are suffering when kept out of school. She mentioned reduced learning and increase in school desertion.
The Dominican Association of Public School Teachers (ADP) says there are no conditions for returning to school. The ADP backs the Ministry of Education’s decision only to allow the return to school where the positivity rate is 50%, where the spread is less than 50 per 100,000 inhabitants and where a long list of other conditions are met. The ADP demands that teachers and all school staff be vaccinated. The ADP also demands that the Ministry of Education repair the “thousands of schools” that are in need of ventilation, water, size of classrooms as established to standards of the World Health Organization, Unesco and Unicef. So far, 18,400 teachers of a total of 243,822 have been vaccinated.
Many private schools around the country have clandestinely reopened, most of these pre-schools.
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Diario Libre
Diario Libre
10 March 2021