They spent Sunday on the phone with colleagues or on the computer to write and rewrite circulars, always with an eye to the email waiting for a communication from the ministry: for the principals of Italian high schools it was an impossible day to forget.
The government dpcm sets distance teaching at a minimum of 75%, but the regional ordinances had already established different quotas, which are sometimes even more severe than the Conte decree itself.
So what do you do?
"Let's continue with the old numbers" say two Roman school leaders, while a Lombard headmaster will already start at 100%.
So Monday will go like this but already on Tuesday everything will have to change.
"The schools - underlines the Ministry of Education - will provide for the adoption of the necessary acts on October 26, with effect from the following day".
In any case, each Region has its own story, let alone each school: in Lazio, for example, the local authority decided a few days ago on the dad at 50%: "And tomorrow (today, ed) we will be at 50% to reflect with the staff how to implement the new rules - explains Cristina Costarelli, dean of the Newton scientific high school in Rome, 1100 students - We are also evaluating the hypothesis of going to 100 percent - he adds - 75% makes the presence truly residual and much the organization is complicated: either a quarter of the children at school for each class, or each class at school one week out of four ".
100% would also make teachers and families breathe in a school that has already registered 5 positives, explains the principal: they are worried about the increase in infections, especially on public transport.
The 'Primo Levi', also in the capital, remains at 50%, at least for tomorrow, a scientific with 900 students.
The headmaster Stefano Sancandi expects signals from the Region: "If they decide to go to 100 percent - cut short - it would make sense, because 75% don't have any".
From September 14 to the 'Levi' the 50% dad applies: they did not have single desks, so with 50% one student sat per counter, and so on.
"It worked well - adds the manager - and I halved the crowding".
75%, he suggests, creates rotation complications.
And then there are those who have the opposite problem, but you have to move to Lombardy, where just two days ago the Region had set the dad at 100 percent.
Now Conte 'concedes' 75%.
"What norm prevails?"
the headmaster of the Iis Caramuell-Roncalli of Vigevano, Matteo Loria, asks in these hours.
When in doubt, in the maxi-school of 1400 students in the province of Pavia, from tomorrow morning and for the whole week it goes 100%.
"But we are perplexed and bewildered, because we would prefer a lower share - concludes the principal - for four months we have been working to adapt the school and we have had the laughable percentage of 6 positives. Students do not get sick at school, and they need socializing," and then there are the written tests, the workshops, the disabled ".
