To the staff, students, parents and wider school community of Moville Community College:
In order to prepare staff, students, parents and the wider school community for the reopening of the school building for teaching and learning I propose to make regular short contributions to the school website outlining new protocols and procedures that will be in effect when students return to school in September. I commit to posting new information each Monday, Wednesday and Friday until all the salient information has been communicated.
Plans for the full return to school in late August/September have been issued by the Department of Education and Skills last week. The Response Plan and Roadmap documents, along with many others, have given school management many instructions, requests and options as to how to best prepare our school for the full return of students and minimizing the risk of Covid 19 getting into the school. Other protocols will be in place if a person in the school displays symptoms.
Donegal ETB has engaged a risk assessor to support schools in preparing for reopening. The assessment was carried out last Tuesday. I will proceed with what we have agreed to do while awaiting his written report.
Every school will have to plan its response to Covid 19 based on its own situation. Moville Community College operates in two main buildings and four external prefabricated rooms. Of the thirty-four classrooms, seventeen are standard classrooms and seventeen are for specialist subjects or special classes. There are twenty-five mainstream class groups and three special classes. We are awaiting the granting of planning permission for 5,200 square metres of floor space to complete the educational provision for the college. At that stage 1800 square metres of prefabricated building will be removed.
One suggestion in the roadmap is that every class has a base room. If Moville CC did that we would have to use many specialist rooms as base classrooms and therefore those specialist subjects could not take place. We will have to continue with students moving from classroom to classroom and introduce protocols as to how students move in and out of rooms, when they are expected to wear a mask and using a one-way travel system in the school.
I will post again with more information on Monday.
Thank you for reading this.
Anthony Doogan
Princpal