A 49-year-old mother in South Tangerang, Banten, said the private elementary school her son was attending had been gathering parents' opinions on reopening the school, an idea she rejected. The businesswoman, who requested anonymity, said one of the conditions suggested by the school was for the parents to have their children PCR-tested once a month.

“The [PCR] test is not to keep our children safe [from transmission]. It's to know whether they've been infected [...] We're also talking about money to feed our families here, which is more important,” she said, arguing that the pandemic had affected families financially. 

She said the school had so far failed to provide further information on how it would conduct classes under health protocols, such as in regard to seating arrangements, classroom attendance time and when a simulation of face-to-face learning would take place.

She also expressed doubt that the health care system and local administrations could anticipate a spike in children COVID-19 cases.

Another mother in South Jakarta, who also requested anonymity, said her daughter's private elementary school had asked parents to fill in information about family health and conditions of their neighborhood every two weeks since August. And since November, before the government announced changes in school reopening policies, they had offered small group classes of six students and teachers' home visits.

The 42-year-old consultant said she rejected these offers, given that the epidemic was still out of control amid increasing cases and positivity rates.

She said that, while she had no doubts over the school's implementation of health protocols, suppressing transmission would require more than that, as it also depended on what families and teachers were doing outside school.

“Everyone can be a source and a target of transmission. I always think that [my family] might have the virus and transmit it to other people. My husband has to travel to other cities for work so our family's risk is bigger,” she said.

The government has given local administrations, school administrations and parents the power to reopen schools, regardless of the regional COVID-19 risk level, but it also assured parents that they could opt out.

The government requires that schools follow certain protocols: filling classes with only up to half of their usual quota, applying a shift system that is further regulated by the schools and applying 1.5-meter social-distancing and mask-wearing rules.

Schools in regions transitioning from the large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) must shut down canteens as well as after-school and noneducational activities, but those already in a “new normal” period were allowed to conduct such activities. Everyone involved -- and people they live with -- has to be healthy without COVID- 19 symptoms.

A November survey conducted by the Association of Education and Teachers (P2G) among 320 teachers, principals and managers from preschool to senior high school across 100 cities and regencies in 29 provinces found that 61 percent of the respondents agreed to reopening schools in stages starting from January 2021, but on certain conditions.

“Teachers demand that the full responsibility [for school reopening] be in the hands of the Education and Culture Ministry, local administrations and parents. If schools become new COVID-19 clusters, don’t blame or criminalize teachers,” the association said recently.

Almost all respondents believed it was important for the government and local administrations to first enact health protocols at schools, 78 percent of respondents said it was necessary to distribute information to parents and students, and 74 percent said schools had to set standards and take precautions for in-classroom learning.

More than half of them considered it necessary to also prepare infrastructure such as barriers between desks, school health clinics and hand-washing facilities. The survey revealed that schools would however find it difficult to prepare these conditions, especially with the funding.

Indonesian Pediatric Society (IDAI) chairman Aman B. Pulungan said they must also prepare measures if students or teachers were found ill or tested positive for COVID-19 and set up a mechanism to monitor the implementation of classroom protocols.

He further said that parents should also consider, among other things, whether their children could already follow health protocol on their own, and if they had comorbidity factors and lived with elderly or at-risk people. Latest government data shows that nearly half of the people aged 60 years and above live in a three-generation household.

Allowing children to go back to school also meant planning for their transportation and packed meals, among other aspects, to suppress transmission, as well as preparing for health service and insurance if they fell ill, he said.

Aman said, however, that the association believed distance learning was the safer method for now.

But for 30-year-old Eviana Fitria Sari, a mother of two in Tangerang, Banten, school reopening plans have brought much hope. As a single parent working long hours running a food delivery business, she said she could not afford to teach her son, who was currently in the first year of elementary school.

Teachers at the public school had not been giving lessons and rather only assigning daily homework, she said, and even then she could only submit them at once by the end of the week due to her work.

“My son told me that he couldn’t read and that he was embarrassed. I kept thinking about it, so I decided to reduce my operational hours and took him to private lessons,” she said.

As a result, her income declined greatly. But that did not mean she was not concerned about her son’s health, especially as she was certain that health protocols at schools would not be fully implemented when students return to classrooms.