The number of Covid-19 cases has exploded in recent days in Seine-et-Marne.
During the week of March 13 to 19, 552 new cases were detected per 100,000 inhabitants in the department, or + 26% compared to the previous week!
Monday, 625 patients were hospitalized (+ 14.5% in one week) including 169 in intensive care (+ 13%).
And schools are not immune to the soaring curve.
According to figures from the rectorate of the Créteil academy, 57 classes and seven schools, the only ones in the academy, were closed because of Covid-19 Thursday at midday in Seine-et-Marne, against 35 one week earlier and 8 two weeks earlier while no school closed on these two dates.
Among the new schools affected in recent days, the Tournelles kindergarten in Chelles which closed its doors on Monday for a week after several Atsem and teachers tested positive for Covid-19 or identified as a contact case.
“A 5th grade class at Beau-Soleil college was also closed on Tuesday after three cases of positive students were detected there.
Students are sent home and have to take PCR or antigen tests.
Parents must arrange to get them back.
For those who do not telework it is very complicated!
», Specifies Céline de Kerpel, representative of the FCPE for all the primary schools of Chelles and Beau-Soleil college.
"A massacre of cases, both among children and teachers"
According to her, the situation is all the more difficult to manage as the number of replacement staff is now tight.
“Unlike the situation last September when the Jules-Verne school had to close but was able to reopen a few days later thanks to the arrival of substitute teachers, all our brigades of substitute teachers are now on the bridge.
This is also the case for municipal staff or supervisors.
The Louis-Lumière high school had to close last Wednesday because supervisors were contaminated or case-contact ", adds the representative of parents of students, who is also a high school teacher.
It underlines the concern and weariness that points both among the parents of students and within the teaching staff compared to previous confinements.
“Among parents and teachers alike, there is a feeling of fear in the face of the resurgence of these increasingly close cases.
With the variants that seem to affect young people more than the first form of the virus, parents fear that their children could bring the virus home, ”reports Céline de Kerpel.
A fear that contrasts, according to her, with the fed-up of the students, to whom it is not always easy to enforce barrier gestures.
At FCPE 77, many calls are on the same subject.
“Parents are still super worried,” comments Stéphanie Durel, the departmental president of the parents' association.
She is currently observing "a massacre of Covid-19 cases in Seine-et-Marne, both among children and among teachers".
"National Education is incapable of replacing teachers"
“We are in a very, very tense situation, in terms of replacing absent teachers,” she said.
There is none left.
It's good to announce today that teachers will be able to be vaccinated but it should have been done from the start ... "
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Traveling to Valenciennes (North) today, Emmanuel Macron spoke of the possibility of vaccinating the first teachers from mid-April.
A deadline too late in the absence of additional measures according to Thierry Grignon, departmental secretary of SNUipp-FSU, majority union in the primary: "If the situation does not change in schools, we are heading towards school closures in cascade and saturation of hospitals with increasingly younger patients.
"
This is the situation observed in Provins (12,000 inhabitants) where the number of positive cases is exploding in schools.
“There are cases in all schools.
It is a statistical reality that I measure in the field, in the hospital for three weeks, according to the number of cases in close people, children and Atsem, confirms the mayor Olivier Lavenka (LR).
This is a situation that we did not experience either during the first confinement, or during the second.
"
Closed for a week after two cases of Covid confirmed among the Atsem, the Terrier-Rouge school reopened on Monday.
But Les Marais school suffered the same fate last Friday.
It will not reopen until next Monday.
"National Education is unable to replace teachers," notes Olivier Lavenka who closed the school, against the recommendations of the departmental services of National Education.
The closure of two other provincial schools is now in the balance.
Depending on the results of the tests in the ranks of teachers, it could intervene before the end of this week.
Teachers sound the alarm
"The health benefit of closing schools during the winter school holidays no longer exists and we cannot imagine how we could hold out like this until the spring holidays", deplores Thierry Grignon, who mentions class closures. daily.
Calling for a reconnection of the government with the reality on the ground, he points in particular to the lack of effectiveness of the health protocol in force in the schools: “The campaigns of saliva tests must be carried out much more quickly, from the first case identified in a school, in order to break the chain of contamination as quickly as possible.
"
Teacher at the elementary school Emile-Zola de Villenoy, closed since Monday after the detection of a positive case among teachers, Eric Sueur is not a supporter of "whatever the cost".
"We want schools to remain open but this should not be done on our backs, we have the impression of being sent to the front," he insists.
"Five colleagues were identified as contact cases and it was impossible to provide lessons with only four teachers", continues Eric Sueur who remains skeptical about the reopening announced Thursday of the school which has more than 200 students.
For this union member of SNUipp-FSU 77, the current situation also highlights the lack of investment in a department where the classes are already particularly busy: “We realize that the Villenoy school was not built with toilets which allow children to go there twenty times a day to wash their hands, the same for classrooms which are not sufficiently large and ventilated.
"
Asked this Tuesday about the situation of classes and schools closed due to Covid cases, the departmental direction of national education services in Seine-et-Marne did not respond to our requests.
