There have been countless words in print, tv, radio, and online devoted to epidemiology, mitigation measures in schools, education poverty, the need to return to in-person-learning, blaming the government, blaming the unions, blaming teachers/SNAs and more. 

While I’ve strong views on all the above my voice doesn’t need to be added to the chorus.

Ministers Foley, Madigan, and their department, at the third time of asking, just announced the dates and broad strokes of the plan for the return to school of students enrolled in special schools and primary special classes. 

The plan for the return of secondary special classes, where I work, is yet to be announced.

Here are some of the outstanding issues as I see them.

How do students who are enrolled in special classes actually get to the school building?

All of these students are entitled to school transport. 

For a variety of reasons not all avail of this but the majority do. 

For my own students, this means travelling by taxi with up to five people — driver, escort, if there is one, and 3 to 4 students — from five different households in the same taxi for up to an hour-and-a-half per day. 

With some students wearing masks and others not — students in special classes are exempt from wearing masks. 

The situation for those who travel by bus is even more complicated, so what are the solutions?

Parents need to be encouraged or incentivised, to drive their children to school where feasible and schools need to be flexible about arrival times to facilitate this. 

This could be early or late arrivals. 

Schools need to be given additional teaching hours to make this workable. School transport providers need to hire more drivers in the short term or to pay existing drivers to divide their groupings and make additional trips.

Which teachers go to school if the special classes are open?

I coordinate three ASD special classes and I'm the only teacher working there full-time. 

All of the other teachers who currently work with me also have mainstream classes to teach. 

These mainstream classes comprise the majority of their timetables, currently being delivered online. 

This poses the question: if I’m the only teacher present, who covers the classes outside of my hours? 

I also don’t have the subject qualifications to cover maths, science, woodwork etc. Who’s going to teach those classes?

Additional hours are very unlikely to stretch this far, but even if they did, it would amount to supervision not teaching, as these staff are unlikely to know the students sufficiently, have the necessary experience, qualifications or subject knowledge.

All teachers who work in special classes could attend school and deliver their mainstream classes online and their ASD special classes in person, as I will be. 

In some schools, like mine, this could mean the majority of school staff on the premises. This again poses additional questions to which I don’t have the answers. 

Is having this number of staff in school adhering to public health advice? What about childcare for these teachers?

Will attendance at school be denying students their right to an education?

Seems like an odd question but most students in special classes attend mainstream classes. This is the majority of their timetables for my students. These will still be delivered online.

My school doesn’t have 18 laptops for the 18 students enrolled in our special classes, so if they attend school they’ll be denied access to their mainstream curricular education.

This could be fixed by allowing schools to buy laptops for every student in a special class who doesn’t have one. 

Simply commit today to this idea, provide the funding after the fact and these can all be in place before the return.

These are three issues and solutions to them of the dozens that exist. 

Some of the others: minimum PPE requirements; students who chose not to return not being entitled to special class support, lack of contact tracing, differing definitions of a close contact in schools, the myth of pods and bubbles.

My students want to be back in school, mostly. 

My colleagues and I want to be back in school. 

The Ministers, department and stakeholders need to sit down and agree solutions before the return is announced and certainly before it happens.