São Paulo – In a strike against the insecurity of back to school amid the pandemic of covid-19, teachers and other workers in the municipal education of São Paulo today (10) held a “motorcade for life” and placed wreaths in front of the São Paulo City Hall, in an act called “I mourn a school without mourning”. “The intentions of this face-to-face return are not about the quality of teaching, of the child being at school, eating. There are obscure interests behind this. I would like to know if the secretary of education, the mayor and the governor of São Paulo had children in public schools, would they be reopened? ”, Asked the director of the Union of Teachers and Municipal Employees of São Paulo (Aprofem), Paulo Soares da Rocha .

Teachers do not accept the return to face-to-face classes
without effective safety conditions, ample vaccination and pandemic control.
They denounce that schools are not fully adapted for functioning
within the conditions that the covid-19 pandemic requires. Many rooms are poorly
ventilated, there are few bathrooms in schools, teachers did not receive
sufficient personal protective equipment. In addition, the structure
complementary to remote education, such as the distribution of tablets and the assembly of
digital rooms, has not been completed.

The teachers’ strike is to demand the maintenance of remote education in all schools, the distribution of tablets to students, priority in the vaccination of education professionals, acquisition of more vaccines with resources that the municipal government has in the box, mass testing for isolate the virus and maintain control of the disease, quality personal protective equipment in sufficient quantity and social support for families of children from high school students. Teachers from the state of São Paulo are also on strike.

Mobilization

The motorcade was held in front of the Municipal Department of Education, with honking and banners. Then the striking teachers went to the 16th Police District, in Vila Clementino, where they registered a police report (BO) against the government of Mayor Bruno Covas (PSDB), for forcing teachers to put themselves in a situation of risk to health. and life to guarantee the return to face-to-face classes.

“We are also addressing the illegal constraint of the city of São Paulo in demanding that education professionals risk their lives on this return. This BO is not symbolic, it has the power to open the discussion in other instances, including the opening of an inquiry to determine the health risks not only of education professionals, but of children who attend schools, of families. Therefore, in addition to the Court of Justice, we want to open up other possibilities, ”explained the secretary of Education Workers of the Union of Workers in Public Administration and Municipalities in the Municipality of São Paulo (Sindsep), Maciel Nascimento.

Today, Greater São Paulo has an average of 3,500 new cases of covid-19 per day and 90 daily deaths. The ICU occupancy rate is 65.6%, with an average of 695 new admissions per day. The Covas government proposal is that the classrooms receive up to 35% of students in the first weeks. In elementary and high school, students will rotate. In daycare centers and preschools, a fixed group will attend schools every day and will be defined by criteria of social vulnerability.