Is enough invested so that children and young people can return to face-to-face teaching?
This is the question you ask yourself at the Penzberger Realschule.
There, the support association and the parents' council have contacted the district office with a request for mobile air purifiers.
The school management tried it too - unsuccessfully.
Penzberg - The question of how less risky face-to-face teaching can work in the future is currently being asked by many schools.
The state government decided last autumn to provide financial support to school authorities in order to implement technical ventilation measures.
Initially it was only about classrooms where the windows cannot be opened to air, later this was extended to all classrooms.
Mobile air purifiers: Parents' council and support association write to the district office
At the end of January, the parents' council and the support association of the Heinrich Campendonk Realschule in Penzberg turned to the district office with the request to obtain this financial support from the Free State in order to purchase mobile air purifiers.
"Safe face-to-face teaching is still the best way to deliver education," they write.
School principal Severin Hammel has already tried the request.
That was just before Christmas.
The reaction was sobering, he says.
With reference to the fact that such an investment had already been rejected in autumn, the concern did not even make it onto the agenda of the responsible committee, said Hammel.
If it were argued that the air purifiers were technically not fully developed or not available, he would understand, says the school principal.
But not with such a reaction.
School closings: Frustration spreads
Frustration has spread in the months of the corona pandemic and the many weeks in which classroom lessons were not possible.
Severin Hammel, in whose school 518 children and adolescents are taught, recalls that the reopening of schools was declared the primary goal of the Corona strategy last spring.
Politics and society were so in agreement on a few points.
According to Hammel, it was correct that after the school closings, investments were made primarily in the digital infrastructure for distance teaching.
This has noticeably increased the quality of digital learning.
"Magical hope that the virus would understand"
The real goal, however, was not better distance teaching, but to keep the schools in full presence as possible, he says.
And then "the efforts looked much more modest".
While plastic partitions and other technical solutions were being installed everywhere, schools were “using soap and fresh air”.
And "on the magical hope that the virus would understand and, for reasons of fairness, spare schools and daycare centers," adds Hammel.
What didn't work: schools had to close again in December.
Hammel criticizes that the time was not used to technically upgrade the schools.
The Free State recognized the need to a certain extent and launched a funding program for air filter systems, from which the CO2 traffic lights were also purchased in autumn.
The district office responsible for the equipment, he criticizes, has "so far been noticeably restrained in terms of material resources in the context of fighting pandemic at schools".
Face-to-face teaching without further measures "under a bad star"
Against this background, the Realschule director Hammel is not particularly optimistic about the future.
When schools reopened last September, he says, it did so at such a low incidence as is currently hard to match.
Also, no potentially more contagious virus variants would have circulated back then.
Nevertheless, the schools had to close again after a few months.
“It is a mystery to me how this is supposed to work now.
We start with much worse conditions, ”says Hammel.
He fears that a presence in schools, without further measures, would be “probably under a bad star” - and as a result the next school could be closed.
Also read: Corona ticker for the Weilheim-Schongau district
And: Candidates for Penzberg's climate committee wanted: "Don't lose another day"