Yangcheon-gu Parents and Village Love Room Quarantine Team Take Direct School Disinfection, Receive 'Applause'

Ensuring Compliance with Daily Life Quarantine Rules through Mask Support and Meal Assistant Deployment...High Praise for 'Online Learning Content' Provided for Homebound Adolescents

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] “I’m worried even though school is starting. The weather is getting hotter, but the children can’t turn on the air conditioner because of COVID-19, and thinking about them studying in a stuffy classroom while wearing masks makes me so sad. If I could, I would go to my child’s school myself to disinfect it.”

Kim ○○, a parent of a child who will be a high school sophomore this year, is worried that her child might neglect studying by not going to school, so the news of school reopening is not entirely welcome.

Parents felt more worried than happy about the government’s announcement to gradually resume in-person classes. They are concerned whether schools are truly safe from COVID-19 infection.

■ Parents’ ‘Bag Avengers’ Join School Disinfection Efforts

Yangcheon-gu (Mayor Kim Soo-young) joined forces with parents to launch the “Valuable School Disinfection Together” project, also known as the ‘Bag Project,’ starting from the 8th. Instead of just worrying about school safety before reopening, parents proposed to Mayor Kim Soo-young that they wanted to participate directly in school disinfection, and the district quickly took action beginning with consultations with schools.

When the district recruited parents to participate in disinfection, over 400 parents and members of the Village Love Disinfection Team immediately volunteered. These parents formed teams with the Village Love Disinfection Team to become ‘Disinfection Avengers,’ completing the first round of disinfection before reopening at 19 schools, starting with Gwangyeong High School and Gwangyeong Girls’ High School on the 8th. The district plans to conduct a second round of disinfection after reopening.

Parents who participated in the disinfection said, “Thinking of the chairs our children will sit on, the desks they will study at, and the cafeteria where they will eat makes us more careful when wiping. Thinking of the playground where children run and play makes us pay close attention to using eco-friendly disinfection hoses,” and they are doing their best in the disinfection efforts.

■ Masks Become Daily Necessities, Provided to About 57,600 Students

The ‘Disinfection Avengers’ project in Yangcheon-gu does not stop there. The district decided to provide masks to students. Masks are absolutely essential daily necessities for practicing social distancing and disinfection. The district is distributing 3 to 10 masks each to all 57,600 kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school students in the district, enabling children to wear masks regularly according to the school schedule. On the 26th, masks were delivered to be distributed to first and second graders in elementary school, third graders in middle school, and second graders in high school who will return to school on the 27th, and masks will be delivered to schools sequentially according to the reopening schedule.

■ ‘Meal Helpers’ Lead Temperature Checks and School Life Disinfection Rules

The district is fully prepared to ensure disinfection rules are followed even outside the classroom. Since it can be especially difficult to maintain distance when many students gather at the same time during arrival and in the school cafeteria, ‘helpers’ will be assigned to all 30 elementary schools. These helpers will act as ‘safety helpers’ by measuring students’ temperatures with thermal cameras inside the school during arrival times, and as ‘meal helpers’ during meal times to ensure students maintain spacing and receive meals safely in the cafeteria.

■ Positive Response to Online Learning Content Such as ‘My Home is School’

Yangcheon-gu’s ‘Student Protection Radar’ has been operating since late March when the COVID-19 crisis peaked. This unprecedented situation of delayed school openings caused academic gaps and the risk of students going outside to find activities, increasing the risk of infection. The district’s first measure was the ‘My Home is School’ project. They recruited village instructors in practical fields such as magic, broadcast dance, Korean traditional music, tangram, and theater to film learning content videos and posted them online. This allowed students to learn various practical subjects at home as if they were at school. Until now, it was rare for local governments to conduct practical subjects online, where on-site experience and feedback are important. The district proactively responded to the growing importance of online communication platforms and aimed to create an educational environment where students can learn anywhere.

Additionally, the district produced and posted online school introduction videos for new elementary students to preview their schools before attending, receiving great responses from parents and prospective students.

The district also attempted a project to comfort the hearts of teenagers staying at home through online channels. The series titled ‘Are You Doing Well at Home?’ consists of three episodes. It addresses common adolescent concerns such as career, bullying, and romantic issues through honest and candid talks by youth counseling experts and genuine teenagers, creating an engaging, practical, and serious online empathy talk platform. After the videos were released on Yangcheon-gu Office’s official YouTube channel, there have been requests to continue with other topics even after the COVID-19 situation ends.

Mayor Kim Soo-young said, “As a mother raising a son, I was both glad and worried about school reopening. Many families have working parents, and I hesitated to suggest participation fearing it might seem like an imposition from the district office, but I am truly grateful that parents took the initiative. It makes me feel that parents’ hearts are the same everywhere, which gives me more strength.”

Mayor Kim added, “They say COVID-19 cannot defeat Korea, but perhaps in Yangcheon-gu, we should say ‘COVID-19 cannot defeat parents.’”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.