Only on Friday morning did Erwin Lenz have a couple of parents on the phone again. They regret that their children, who are in sixth grade at the Ignaz-Taschner-Gymnasium (ITG), will not be able to go to the school camp this year either. For the time being, the Ministry of Education has banned such trips lasting several days until Easter, but Lenz can well imagine that the regulations will continue to apply beyond that and that he will have to put off other parents. He takes it relatively calmly, after all, such phone calls have long been part of everyday life for headmasters like Lenz.
Despite all the fears, school operations resumed after the Christmas holidays without any major incidents – even if individual students are always in quarantine. The Karlsfeld elementary school and the archbishop’s Vinzenz von Paul secondary school in Markt-Indersdorf report that the feared wave of infections after the holidays did not materialize. “We don’t feel any holidays,” says the Karlsfeld elementary school. Tanja Huber, head of the Dr.-Josef-Schwalber-Realschule Dachau, notices a slight increase in the number of corona cases among the students compared to before the holidays. “The total number of schoolchildren who are in quarantine or have tested positive has increased somewhat because these are cases that were reported to us from the Christmas holidays.” In the three tests in the school itself, there were only three positive quick tests that have not yet been confirmed. But at least ITG headmaster Lenz does not want to be blinded by this first positive balance: “We believe that the numbers will skyrocket.” And the fact that the fifth wave will not stop at the classrooms is not just the assumption of the headmaster of the ITG.
Albert Sikora, head of the Dachau school authority, is positive about the first week after the holidays. Fears of a sharp increase in the number of infections have not yet been confirmed. Nevertheless, like Lenz, he assumes that the numbers will increase: “We can see that this is already picking up speed.” The school authority is concerned about bottlenecks in the teaching staff, which could arise as the number of infections increases. In this regard, we are currently waiting for the new quarantine regulations for teachers who have already been boosted to come into force.
Peter Mareis, headmaster of the Josef-Effner Gymnasium (JEG), has given the all-clear, at least for his school: There are fewer teacher absences than usual at this time of year. Marais suspects that the masks could be partly responsible for this. In addition, all classes will continue to be tested three times a week, regardless of whether a child is vaccinated or not. If there is a positive corona case in a class, tests are carried out daily. Such intensive tests are currently taking place in five classes at the JEG. In addition, Mareis is pleased that normal school operations are possible as far as possible: “We do everything here to enable the students to go back to normal – albeit with restrictions.”
As of Friday morning, 25 students at the ITG have tested positive and are at home. A teacher sent Lenz home after two quick tests with different results as a precaution. However, entire classes are not in quarantine at the ITG either. This coincides with information from the district office: When asked, it reports that there are currently no school classes in quarantine. Basically, there are no hotspots in schools or anywhere else in the district, most of the infections took place in the private sphere. Of course, class trips, concerts and theater performances are out of the question under such conditions. According to Lenz, however, it is exactly what is so urgently needed again: “At the moment, school is not what makes school what it is.”
At least on this point, everyone who is asked about the current situation in schools in the district agrees. However, the ideas differ as to how the teaching staff could be relieved. On Thursday, Simone Fleischmann, President of the Bavarian Teachers’ Association (BLLV), wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and presented him with an “immediate program” in seven points. The demands include “clear guidelines for decisions about on-site teaching”. There should be guidelines for the level of incidence, air quality, the vaccination rate, the number of quarantine cases and current teacher care. Furthermore, the health measures such as vaccinations, ventilation systems, masks, tests and distances would have to be implemented consistently and the prevailing shortage of teachers would have to be reacted to, which would make it necessary to accept “increased class cancellations” due to the pandemic. Because the situation is different in all schools, “the decision-making powers of the school management have to be significantly expanded again” in order to be able to implement the “inevitable, tailor-made emergency solutions on site”. In addition, the “expectations of the school year and the performance of the students” would have to be scaled back and further investments made in digital equipment.
As far as digitization at the ITG is concerned, Lenz has no complaints. Beate Rexhäuser, teacher at the Erdweg elementary and middle school and BLLV district association chairwoman, sees things quite differently. Even after almost two years of the pandemic, the equipment is still “underground” in some places because it depends far too much on the school material expenses carrier. In the case of grammar schools, this is the district, in the case of primary and secondary schools, it is the respective municipalities.
However, Rexhäuser is not so concerned about the lack of technology, but above all about their ninth graders, who are supposed to do their qualification this school year and need grades for it. “We sometimes follow students for weeks until we get an oral grade,” says Rexhäuser, someone is always sick. Even if everyone is there, a fair assessment is difficult under the current circumstances. In addition, the exams were just as difficult last year as they were in the years before Corona. The fact that some high school students did brilliantly last year is nice, but not representative. And even if she is pushing for face-to-face teaching for this very reason, she underscores the demands of her association: “Lessons must be very clear and unambiguous.” Otherwise nobody would believe the teachers that they would work beyond the limit.
Lenz finds it problematic to give every headmaster and headmistress more decision-making powers, as required by the BLLV. “So you could play the schools off against each other immediately.” If one school handled it this way and the other that way, measures would become even more difficult to understand. At district level, Lenz considers a uniform regulation by the district office to be more sensible. Bavaria-wide regulations, as they exist now, are not ideal. Lenz admits: “Of course there are always special situations.” If around ten of his 110 teachers were to be absent due to corona, he would have to close the school for better or worse. It is simply impossible for his already overburdened staff to compensate for 230 lost hours. “But we’re not in that situation yet.”