The head of the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) Giselle Cruz announced, on Monday of the previous week, the suspension of the school year in all public education centers in the country, which began on February 8 in a joint head-to-head confrontation. Hypothetical method or distance.
He explained that the interruption means extending the school year, which must end at the beginning of December 2021, but now he will do so in January 2022 to restore the semesters that will not be given between this month and next July in those countries. two months.
We are taking this measure to drastically reduce mobility, and it is the main action for health authorities in this Central American country to curb the accelerated infection of SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, and alleviate the complex hospital situation.
For more than two weeks, Costa Rica has seen the worst situation since the epidemic arrived in March 2020, as it reached the maximum number of daily deaths, new cases, critical cases, and admissions, which caused a crisis in the hospital system, with Covid-19 patients waiting for a bed suitable for its severity.
The Minister’s announcement in the European Parliament expected the press conference called by the representatives of the four unions in the education sector to reveal the measures of pressure and protest in favor of suspending lessons face to face.
Representatives of these unions rejected the official decision to cut off the 2021 academic year, and thus decided to keep the national protest next Wednesday in a virtual way, called #Jornada por la Vida, with the main aim of honoring the dozens of educators who died. By Covid-19.
The strike included the publication of photos of unemployed students and other employees in educational centers and messages about the causes of #Jornada por la Vida, as well as virtual conferences on education-related issues and the Covid-19 epidemic in Costa Rica.
In the photos, workers display posters with demands of the #Jornada por la Vida movement, such as the immediate vaccination of frontline education personnel during a month of complete suspension of classes and extensive testing in schools.
They also asked President Carlos Alvarado and Minister Cruz to define a roadmap to bridge the technological gap that is running out of the possibility of receiving virtual lessons for more than 500,000 students, as it is unacceptable to use the excuse of not having internet access for this number of students to suspend the academic year.
jf / ale