The Committee for Public Education (CFPE) invites educators, students, parents and workers in Australia and abroad to participate in an online meeting on Saturday, November 13 at 4:00 p.m. (AEDT), to discuss the urgency to build a movement against the reopening of the school system in a context of generalized community transmission of COVID-19.

There is no scientific basis for the hasty return to face-to-face teaching. Like its international counterparts, the ruling elite in Australia does not act in medical science but in the interests of profit. Schools must be opened and unvaccinated children brought back to classrooms so that their parents can be reunited in the workplace. This is necessary for the economic “reopening”, with companies having carte blanche to maximize their profits without regard to health and safety.

The Australian political establishment insists that children and young people are not at significant risk of COVID-19. This is a blatant lie. There is now a clear body of scientific evidence on the substantial risks posed to children and young people by the disease, including long-term neurological and respiratory effects.

Science and international experience show that schools acted as vectors for the virus. In the UK, more than 108 children have died from COVID and thousands have long suffered from COVID. In the United States, more than 2.1 million children have been infected in the past three months with more than 230 child deaths.

In the past five weeks in Australia, more than 200 schools have closed in New South Wales and more than 400 in Victoria. Schools in regional centers represent a growing number of school groups and positive cases among children and staff. Already in Victoria, 13% of all infections are in children under 9, 28% of those who catch the virus are under 19.

In response, authorities are lifting the most basic health measures, with infections to see only specific classrooms asked to isolate, instead of entire schools and new guidelines on what constitutes close contact. Not only has a science-based virus elimination strategy been rejected, but many basic mitigation measures are being abandoned under the new “Let It Rip” program.

Throughout the pandemic, teachers ‘unions, including the Teachers’ Federation of New South Wales (NSWTF) and the Australian Education Union (AEU), have functioned as spokespersons for the establishment policy, relaying official health directives while striving to block any independent action by educators and school workers to defend their health and safety.

Teachers and students must take matters into their own hands by forming grassroots safety committees in every school, independent of unions, to organize resistance and defend the lives of staff and students, including the right to e-learning full. .

The CFPE has played a leading role in the struggle for the formation of these committees in Australia, drawing on the crucial experiences of educators from North America, Europe and Asia who have also organized themselves. regardless of their unions.

The CFPE online meeting will review these experiences and present our perspective of mobilizing a unified struggle of school workers, students and workers, on an internationalist and socialist agenda.

Register in advance and promote the meeting with educators, students, colleagues and friends!