Government instructs schools to close, but some locals resist

For millions of Ukrainian school and university students, the morning of March 12 was no ordinary one.

They didn’t attend classes as usual, but instead stayed home and carried on with distance learning instead. They will do that for at least three more weeks due to the government’s decision to shut down all educational institutions, a precaution against the novel coronavirus pandemic.

However, some local authorities, such as the ones in the eastern city of Kharkiv and western hub of Lviv, at least initially refused to follow the government’s orders, posing a possible risk to public health.

The Cabinet of Ministers announced the ruling to close nurseries, schools and universities on March 11.

There have been three confirmed cases of the disease so far in Ukraine, but no deaths.

The infection, which originated in China in December 2019, has been detected in 134,000 people and has claimed the lives of nearly 5,000 people worldwide.

Schools must close

The order to close places of education was accompanied by a ban on events that involve more than 200 people and the shutdown of cinemas, entertainment centers and other venues.

Although children and youth generally have mild symptoms with coronavirus, they might still pass it along to others, while those with underlying health conditions are more vulnerable. Children are advised to follow common preventive actions, including washing hands with warm water and soap, covering coughs and not touching their faces. But since children can spread germs easily, studies suggest that proactive school closures might delay an outbreak’s peak and reduce the rate of new cases.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 46 countries on three continents have announced or implemented school shutdowns on a local or nationwide scale.

Distance learning

The Ministry of Education and Science issued a statement on March 11 announcing that educational institutions of all levels and forms of ownership will have to close until April 3. They will have to cancel all classes, while teachers and professors are required to provide distance learning.

Starting on March 12, the majority of institutions, or about 5,000 schools and over 600 universities and colleges, closed down. The measure affects more than 4 million students throughout the country.

But quarantines are nothing new to Ukrainian schools. It’s a rare winter when students don’t miss class for a one-week or two-week shutdown amid the spread of infections such as the flu. In fact, just a little more than a month ago, 120 schools in Kyiv were partially or completely shut down because of the rapid spread of viral respiratory infections.

In Ukraine, the heads of educational institutions can implement a quarantine when more than 20% of their students (or of a single class) get infected.
It’s not yet clear if teachers and professors will continue working, but the education ministry has recommended that all educational institutions “partially move employees to remote work.”

Oksana Denshchykova, an English teacher from Sumy, a city of 265,000 people some 330 kilometers northeast of Kyiv, says that the ministry will give more instructions on March 13.

She says that teachers might have to take two weeks of vacation out of their 56-day paid annual vacation allowance, which they normally use up during the summer. The third week of the quarantine, which runs from March 23 until March 29, coincides with the official spring break, so it won’t be counted as vacation.

“We’re not losing anything,” Denshchykova told the Kyiv Post. “We will just have to rest now and work more in summer,” she said.

In order to not disrupt the educational process, teachers give students homework, while professors either give assignments or plan to hold lectures through video conferences, depending on their subject’s plan.

Denshchykova says that students will have to either send their assignments online or hand them in, which is not prohibited.

The education ministry will also postpone trial examinations known as the external independent evaluation, or EIE, which Ukrainian school graduates take to test their knowledge before taking actual tests at the end of an academic year. The trial EIE will take place in early April instead of late March.

Denshchykova believes that the quarantine will not have a negative effect on the graduates’ preparation for the EIE. In fact, she says that it might actually have the opposite impact, as students will have more time to focus on the subjects they need to pass, as well as to take more private lessons, as many usually do before the tests.

Mayors disobey

Most of the local authorities supported the government’s new measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Some authorities, like the Kyiv City State Administration, even implemented the measures before the Cabinet of Ministers made the decision at a national level.

However, some local authorities have liberally interpreted the government’s instructions.

The head of the Odesa Oblast Administration, Maksym Kutsyi, said that the southern oblast will close schools and ban mass events, however, it will not shut down cinemas, theaters or entertainment malls.

“If necessary and the epidemic situation worsens, additional decisions will be made regarding the closure or restriction of institutions, entertainment or cultural centers,” Kutsyi said during a press conference on March 12.

Meanwhile, in Lviv, a city of 724,000 people located 540 kilometers to the west of Kyiv, nurseries and schools will be open until the end of the week, while universities will close immediately.

“Thursday and Friday are a transitional period,” Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi wrote on Facebook on March 11. “We understand that not everyone is able to leave their children at home immediately,” he added.

Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes went further, saying that the city will not close schools and nurseries at all. He said that there is no registered or even suspected case of coronavirus in Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million people located 478 kilometers east of Kyiv.

Kernes said that parents will struggle with taking care of their children for three weeks, while they keep working.

“For many of them, it is now becoming an ordeal,” Kernes wrote on Facebook on March 11.

Following the government’s ruling is not optional, but mandatory. That’s why prosecutors in Kharkiv opened proceedings on March 12 into the city administration’s possible violation of epidemic control rules. If found guilty, officials could face a Hr 1,700 ($65) fine, six months of arrest or three years of prison.

Hassle for parents

The Ministry of Health recommended that employers let employees work remotely in order to decrease the risk of the coronavirus spreading — and all the more so if they have children who are now quarantined.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs set an example by allowing workers to either work from home or bring their children to the ministry if they have nobody to stay with. Many private companies appeared to be flexible, too.

Anna Diatlenko, 31, a mother of a 3-year-old girl and an IT company employee, was allowed to work remotely. Normally, Diatlenko’s daughter would stay at a private nursery from 8 a.m. till 7 p.m., as both she and her husband work full time.

“Everyone is responsive because they all have children and understand everything,” Diatlenko told the Kyiv Post.