Open pre-primary section, too: Parents in open letter to CM Uddhav Thackeray

Students attend a class at Babasaheb Deshpande School, Sion on March 13, 2020. File pic/Ashish Raje

As schools are looking to reopen for all stds from December 1 even amid the scare of the new Covid-19 variant, Mumbai parents have intensified their demand to reopen the pre-primary section as well and wrote another open letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday. The state Cabinet recently allowed reopening of schools for all stds which came as a relief to most parents. This, however, is not applicable to the pre-primary section, leaving parents of children aged three-five worried still.

"Our smallest children, who go to pre-primary, urgently need to go back to school. As per the Paediatric Task Force, they are not only the most immune to the virus, but even if they do contract [the disease], their recovery is the fastest. Most importantly, they are in their most formative years, and not being in school is causing serious distress as their learning is all sensory, through touch, feel, play and experience. They are absolutely not able to learn anything on a screen. They have already lost out on 21 months of this important learning and are suffering immensely," stated the letter addressed to the CM.

According to parents, there is not much point now keeping the children at home when others are going to schools, especially because they need it the most. The letter added, "We don't know the future of Covid but schools should be allowed to keep working with SOPs if numbers and cases are in control... With Covid still around for who knows how long if we have to keep closing schools it will probably remain closed through the entire year."

Talking about the new Covid variant scare, Gayatri Sabharwal, a parent, said, "This new variant is currently not here in India or Maharashtra, then why should we be scared? More so, there are going to be new variants surfacing as Covid is here to stay, and we have to learn to live in this new normal. Unless there is a really concerning increase in the number of patients, I think there is no point keeping our children at home." The parents have also started an online petition on the portal change.org which is gaining support.