Editorial
Pain and relief.
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It pretty much sums up the two ends of the emotional spectrum felt when NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced schools would return to full time, face-to-face teaching on Monday.
This clearly hadn't been communicated with schools before Monday afternoon as many schools, particularly some Catholic schools, had emailed parents reinforcing the fact children would continue on just one day a week and urging parents not to send children on days they were not allocated.
A couple of hours later those same schools were then forced to email out again to parents saying: "Please come Monday".
Parents, particularly working parents, will welcome a return to class work and an end to home schooling. let's be clear about that.
Yet you can only feel sorry for all of the teachers who put in hours of work facilitating the online learning needs for their students only to see that thrown out the window in a moments notice.
What is completely clear here is the government has made the choice of "the greater good".
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They have chosen the greater benefit to the community and the economy at this time is to have kids back in class getting an appropriate education. Face to face.
Yet make no mistake, this doesn't mean the risk to the community from coronavirus has disappeared and the Premier was quite clear about that in her daily address on Tuesday morning,
The Premier said we need to be prepared some schools may need to temporarily shut or be on high alert due to COVID outbreaks.
The Premier added "we have to learn to live in a COVID safe environment" with no vaccine in sight.
It was also made clear, while it would be a return to full face-to-face teaching, there would be changes such as no school assemblies, excursions and staggered drop off and pick up.
"We look forward to bringing some normality back to families," the Premier said.
There's that word again "normal". This period is anything but normal. Just a mixed emotional time of pain and relief.