"The Ministry of Health made recommendations regarding the safe return of children to schools. This included capsules of 15 students, masks, distancing, hygiene and other measures. The problem is, the Ministry of Health has no authority in the schools. The Ministry of Education decided that these measures were not possible in a school environment, so capsules were eliminated and regulations were not enforced. The idea of having a capsule system, similar to what many work places are doing now, is to expose limited numbers of staff and students to a potentially infected person. The maximum quarantine needed for a sick student would have been14 other students plus teacher/s - so 15-17 others. With the current situation, we are seeing a breakdown of the school system because of mass quarantines needed."
So how did Israel get to 17,000 students and staff are in bidud? Because as soon as one student tests positive, the entire school is shutdown and everyone is in quarantine. Weeeeell, today we saw this up close and personal when Penina's school became the latest with a student who tested positive. The girl is two grades younger than her (that's all the info we know) and we've only been sending Penina on an "as needed" basis for bagrut matriculation exams. As she was walking home from one today, her phone went berserk with messages from her class: the police had come to shut down her school, with one class being herded out while in the middle of a bagrut exam. Although, by the time she got home, it wasn't a surprise to us since OUR group chats were going nuts too. She gets to be in "house bidud" since she's not in the girl's class, so we'll think positively about it being a two week vacation from going outside (the students in the girl's class have to be in "one room bidud").
Some nice news is that she'll at least have extra company while hanging around the house: we got a puppy last week! He's a very cute and tiny Maltese. Still working on the name (although my mother's suggestion of "Corona" was spot on. We had actually planned to finally cave to Ilana's years-long desire to own a dog when Penina graduates high school next year. We even thought we'd call it "Penina", just to keep things simple. But worldwide lunacy moved the schedule up a fair bit).
Penina says she's part of the "Pup-Parazzi" ("Puppyrazzi"?). And although I'm likely going back to work part-time (two afternoons a week) starting next week, I'm delighted I'm still home, as it's enabled me to do "Mutt-ternity Leave" and work on house training him (he's a natural!).
Of this photo shoot with Chana, Penina says, "It's JUST like doing a newborn shoot!!!"
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