Why French teachers marched on Thursday

There was a protest on Thursday. That isn’t, in and of itself, all that surprising. There are many protests in France. The revolutionaries decided in 1789 that the right to protest ought to be considered a fundamental human right, and, at least in France, the idea has stuck. There are limits, of course. Since the mid 1930s there has been a requirement to declare them ahead of time, at least supposing that they’re going to be in the public space. And destruction of property or people is, evidently, illegal.

In fact, the reason for the protest on Thursday wasn’t shocking either. The size of it was a bit more of a surprise. Teachers, particularly elementary school teachers, and parents finally decided that they’d reached their limits with the ever changing COVID rules of the French Minister of Education.

When students returned to school in September, after most adults and teens had been vaccinated, the rule for elementary and preschools was that one case in a class would close the class for a week. Three unconnected cases (so not siblings) in a school would close the school.

That went fairly well for a while, until the number of classes and schools that needed to be closed began to tick up. The obvious solution to the increasing number of cases was determined to be…relaxing the rules. Now it would take three cases to close a class, and many more than that to close a school. That remained the rule until the return from Christmas vacation.

After that, the rules changed quickly.

In the first version, all students who were contact cases of a confirmed COVID case had to be picked up from school immediately and taken to be tested, either with an antigen test performed in a pharmacy or with a PCR test given in a lab. Lines at testing sites exploded. Any positive antigen test needed to be confirmed with a PCR test, which led to still longer lines. A negative test meant that that child could return to school, but needed to be followed up with parent administered self tests given after 2 days and 4 days and, should one of those prove to be positive, with a PCR test to confirm. Parents had to sign a declaration that the tests had been negative. A second case in the classroom a day or two later would restart the whole procedure.

In theory, the self tests were supposed to be free with a copy of the negative first test results and a note from the school. In practice, the schools were so overwhelmed with cases that the notes were coming rather sporadically. To make things yet more complicated, the free tests hadn’t yet been delivered to the pharmacies, who therefore had nothing to distribute.

After a few days, they changed things. A PCR conformation would no longer be necessary for a positive antigen test, though a pharmacy test would be necessary to confirm a positive self test. The lines got ever so slightly shorter. The initial test and two self tests remained the order of the day, but the process didn’t start over if someone else in the class tested positive within a week of the first postive test.

Then they changed again. The powers that be decided that all of the tests could be performed at home, and that there was no reason to ask parents to collect their kids early. Also, parents would only have to sign a declaration of a negative test the first time. The rest of them, well…. Once again, parents were supposed to receive an official letter allowing them to pick up three free self tests were at the pharmacy. Once again, the schools were so overwhelmed with COVID cases (among both students and staff) that the letters were slow in coming.

To further complicate things, the smaller kids were running screaming and crying and holding their noses at the sight of a nasal swab. (I can’t say that I blame them, to be honest.) Some parents were contemplating lying about having tested their kids. Others had decided to just keep their kids home for a week after each exposure, and to only test them if they developed symptoms. Still others had decided that they would keep their kids home from school until the current wave had passed, be that in February or in June.

By Monday, everyone had had enough, and a strike was called for Thursday. Protest marches were organized. Some schools closed completely. Others had classes closed. Parents were urged to keep kids home in a show of support. Many did so. High school students blockaded the entrances to their schools with trash cans and the police were called in to break up the blockades.

Was it successful? The teachers got better protective equipment and a promise to hire more substitute teachers. As far as the testing regimen, there have been no changes, yet. We’ll have to see what the new week brings.

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