While teachers are getting ready to welcome students of classes IX and X when schools reopen on Monday, many managements are worried about meeting expenses as a majority of parents have not paid fees for the previous and current academic years.
It is not just staff salaries that school managements are worried about. Many have invested in infrastructure or had to renovate classrooms to adhere to government’s SOPs to ensure that students and staff can maintain physical distancing.
In addition, a significant part of money will go into sanitising classrooms, washrooms, labs, and common areas, etc. and purchasing disinfectants, as well as hiring non-teaching staff to carry out these duties. Staff have to clean the school premises multiple times a day, said one principal.
D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka, said that on an average, across private schools following the State syllabus, only around 30-50% of parents have paid the fees. “Even among that category, most have paid only a portion of the annual fees. With this in mind, the association will write to the State government to subsidise various costs,” he said.
S. Sathyamurthy, president , Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association, said that they are encouraging schools to make investments in infrastructure, sanitising the school and buying other items needed to follow the SOP laid down by the State government. “We are telling them that things may improve this year if more parents are confident of all the precautionary measures that we are taking and start sending their children to school,” he said.
Lokesh Talikatte, State unit president, Recognised Unaided Private Schools’ Association, Karnataka, said that school managements will suffer huge losses if other classes don’t resume. “We will have to sanitise the whole school, but if only two grades are open, it is a huge burden for us,” he said. Another expenditure is overtime pay for teachers who have to conduct both offline and online classes from Monday onwards.