The dilemma is unprecedented. While Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is pushing for the reopening of schools, some school districts in the state, such as Miami-Dade, are indicating that they do not want to reopen their institutions as long as the current situation linked to the Covid pandemic is 19 will not have improved. The start of the school year will therefore be on Monday, August 31 at a distance, at least until the end of September, for public schools in Miami. Regarding private establishments, reopening plans are sometimes different and hybrid formulas could emerge.
” This is reassuring news because I really did not want my five year old son to go back to school in such conditions. », Says Héloïse Colin who educates her child in a public establishment in the district of Brickell. Like all students enrolled in a public school in the Miami-Dade School District, her son will have access to My School Online, a new platform centralizing all school tools. ” I can’t wait to see how it works, but it could only be better than what we experienced during the end of the school year because then you had to use software to attend the course and go to three or four sites in order to do the exercises », Explains the Frenchwoman who, despite everything, believes that the 100% virtual formula contains its share of constraints. ” At this age, I have to be permanently available to be able to help my son, so it is impossible for me to be able to return to work, even part-time seems unthinkable ”.
” I feel like I’m being held hostage », Indicates for its part Anna Alexis Michel whose 18-year-old daughter is educated in a public high school in Miami Beach. ” When she works in her room, there are neither her classmates to help her nor her teachers to explain the method to her, I sometimes find myself forced to do trigonometry even though I have a literary profile. She jokes. This mother also believes that virtual lessons quickly show their limits. ” Unlike a day spent in her high school, my daughter doesn’t really have any interactions with her friends and teachers, so she doesn’t practice her English very much and I’m afraid that her language level will eventually drop. “.
For some higher education students, setting up virtual courses is also sometimes problematic. ” It is easier to follow a course given in class because currently to connect I use my phone and when I receive a message or an email I am tempted to look at it, so inevitably I lose attention faster », Says Rachel Santos. A graduate of a nursing school in France, the 30-something is undergoing specialized training in surgery at a public university in order to be able to practice in the operating theater. ” For now, only theory is offered as an online course. The practice, which is obviously essential, has been postponed until an unknown date, which will inevitably delay my job search. “.
Private schools, meanwhile, sometimes make parents languish because their back-to-school format has not yet been officially announced. ” In my establishment, we would move towards one day a week of face-to-face class and the rest in virtual for kindergarten children, and these would be totally online courses. for other students “, Indicates Camille Bleuet who educates her two children aged five and seven in a private school approved by the Department of National Education south of Miami. ” This means that I would have to accompany one of my sons to school while the second would have to take his virtual lessons at home, a situation that seems unmanageable., she insists. I also do not see why private establishments would have better sanitary conditions to accommodate students while public schools prefer to remain closed as a precaution. It would be necessary that the establishments end up aligning because the situation is really incomprehensible ”.
