Coronavirus: Melville High School closing for day to plan longer closure

Melville High School principal Clive Hamill is holding a teacher-only day on Monday "to undertake the groundwork for the potential closure of schools". Photo / File

A Hamilton school will close for the day on Monday to plan for a possible longer closure due to coronavirus.

Melville High School principal Clive Hamill has notified parents today that the school will be closed on Monday for a teacher-only day "to undertake the groundwork for the potential closure of schools".

Other schools are cancelling assemblies, camps and field trips, and planning for how they will deliver lessons to students if they have to close their buildings.

Stephen Lethbridge, principal of Auckland's decile-10 Pt Chevalier School, is investigating whether he can put a transmitter on the roof to extend the school's fast broadband service to families that don't have broadband at home.

"There are ways that we could use video and technology to be able to share resources online so that kids could access them, and parents can help there with the little ones," he said.

"We are looking at some form of video conferencing where teachers may check in at some point in the day."

At the other extreme, Phil Reynolds, principal of decile-3 Mangakahia Area School, 27km west of Whangārei, says half of his families don't have cellphone coverage so teaching them online is impossible.

"We are looking at delivering hard copies of materials to kids who can't access it and making a daily run up and down the valley," he said.

The Ministry of Education has rung all schools in the past two days to find out how many students have internet access and suitable devices at home "should their school or kura be closed for a period of time due to Covid-19".

Hamill told Melville parents that his school "will be ensuring that our online and traditional teaching resources are available for all students to minimise the disruption to learning, should the school be forced to close".

"We are receiving daily updates from the ministry, and we have numerous questions and queries, which we are unable to answer at this time," he said.

Melville's board of trustees will hold a special meeting tomorrow nightto review the school's pandemic strategy.

All schools, early childhood services and tertiary institutions are required to have a pandemic plan.

Stephen Lethbridge is looking at putting a transmitter on his school roof to get broadband out to families who don't have it if the school has to close. Photo / Michael Craig

Lethbridge, the incoming president of the Auckland Primary Principals' Association, said most schools had been preparing for the pandemic since the beginning of this year, and were now reviewing camps and assemblies after gatherings of more than 500 people were banned on Monday.

The ministry told schools that camps should go ahead only with "personal protective equipment" to care for and isolate any student who became ill, and assemblies should only happen if students were kept at least 1.5 metres apart.

"So we have put a hold on school assemblies," Lethbridge said. "We are playing with the idea of why can't we have a virtual assembly in classrooms using video conferencing."

Pt Chevalier School and its neighbouring Pasadena Intermediate School have both postponed their school camps which were due to take place next week.

Lethbridge has asked nearby Selwyn Village retirement village residents to stop coming in to read with children for their own safety, and he has asked teachers to supervise children washing their hands before they eat.

"Yes, that takes time away from learning, but these are difficult times," he said.

"I'm a pretty shake-hands type of person, and lots of kids come up and want to do that, so now I have instigated a rather intricate foot-tapping greeting."

Auckland Secondary Principals Association president Richard Dykes said almost all trips that he has heard of have been cancelled. His school, Glendowie College, has cancelled a history trip to the Bay of Islands where students would have stayed in hotels, but is going ahead with another trip where all risks can be managed.

Phil Reynolds, pictured last year when the school swimming pool was closed, is looking at delivering study material to students' homes in the Mangakahia Valley. Photo / John Stone, Northern Advocate

Reynolds has also cancelled a planned trip to the Bay of Islands for Mangakahia students interested in careers in tourism, and has cancelled assemblies.

He said a big problem, if the school had to close, would be supervising children at home.

"A lot of our families are out on farms. If the children are under 14, that raises issues for the parents. It's a mess," he said.

"We have a very high percentage of Māori families and they are looking to have their kids looked after by others, so we'd be bringing kids back together in close proximity, and kids getting together are not always easy to direct.

"We have devices for all our seniors that they use at school, but we don't have a device for every junior, so that's why we are looking at home delivery of material. It would be about maintenance of the basics rather than any new teaching."