It is only in ten days, on June 2, that the deconfinement map could still evolve, but in the still red departments, the educational community counts the days: after the return of schoolchildren, May 11 – a return disconnected from the color and degree of circulation of the coronavirus in the regions -, the secondary school students from Ile-de-France, Grand-Est, Hauts-de-France and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté are still in doubt.
Time is running out: in Seine-Saint-Denis, in Meurthe-et-Moselle, two areas very affected by the Covid-19 epidemic, the presidents of the departmental councils – who are responsible for the colleges – ask that a return in progress can be made as soon as possible. In a press release issued Friday, the socialists Stéphane Troussel and Mathieu Klein plead thus “So that a targeted and gradual return to college is envisaged now in all departments, green or red”.
“It is not possible to deprive direct contacts with the school, between March and September, of children already in difficulty before confinement and for whom, as we know, distance education does not work”, they explain to us, adopting de facto their own arguments made by the Minister of Education in favor of a “Social return”. But not his calendar.
“Absence of framework”
In Seine-Saint-Denis, where nearly two-thirds of the 130 public colleges and their 80,000 pupils are covered by priority education, these are the “Neighborhood children” that Stéphane Troussel would like to be able to reconvene as quickly as possible. “For the past fifteen days, young people have been able to go out, take transport, go to the supermarket … Wouldn’t they be safer in college? “, questions the chosen one. In Meurthe-et-Moselle (28,000 middle school students), it is the urban youth but also isolated villages that they would like to be able to “Hang up first” Mathieu Klein. Alerted him as early as March, to “Denounce a national framework unsuited to the social reality of the territories”. The academic authorities did not follow up. “With deconfinement, young people are in the open air, he continues. Some have stopped all contact with their establishment for weeks. Lack of a frame is not a good option. ”
This “Early return”, that the two elected officials are calling for “In strict compliance with health regulations”, can rely, they say, on the colleges that remained open during confinement for the care of caregivers’ children. A very symbolic welcome: in Seine-Saint-Denis, the eight secondary establishments transformed into a reception center, even after being open to the children of firefighters and police officers, received only a handful of teenagers. The same is true in Meurthe-et-Moselle, where twelve colleges have so far taken in only ten young people. “By going from twelve to nineteen open colleges, and by limiting the return to school to thirty middle school students per site, we could already target 600 young people”, argues Mr. Klein.
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