Mysore/Mysuru: Hundreds of lower kindergarten (LKG) and upper kindergarten (UKG) students returned to schools after a gap of 20 months this morning following the State Government’s decision to open all pre-schools and anganwadis from today.

Cooped up indoors and with their activities limited to neighbourhood play areas till now due to COVID, the tiny-tots returned to schools smiling behind their colourful face masks. They were warmly welcomed with flowers, balloons and sweets.

Many private schools in city had erected welcome buntings at the entrance and teachers at the gates conveyed the message to parents that their little ones were safe inside the school and all precautions had been taken so that there is no outbreak of the virus. Some teachers even produced their two-dose vaccination certificates before the parents.

As per the guidelines released by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the children will have to carry a consent letter from their parents allowing them to attend physical classes.

Parents have been recommended to send home-cooked food to the children along with drinking water. They have also requested to teach the kids basic cough etiquette and carry a handkerchief at all times.

In Mysuru, there are over 1,046 Government Primary Schools and only 43 of them have kindergarten sections. There are over 360 students studying in LKG and an equal number of them are in UKG, said Deputy Director of Public Instruction (DDPI) Ramachandra Raje Urs. There are over 132 private aided schools that have kindergartens and there are 586 unaided ones.

In all, 2,536 parents had approached us with consent letters through the app designed by the Department and the exact number of children who attended classes will be known by evening after the feedback is obtained from individual schools, he added.

“All school managements have been asked to provide clean, hygienic drinking water. The teaching and non-teaching staff have been briefed on how to monitor children with symptoms such as fever, cold, and difficulty in breathing,” the DDDPI said.

Parents have to drop and pick-up children from schools and in rural areas, anganwadi workers have been entrusted with the responsibility. All teachers and staff members will have to produce a mandatory RT-PCR negative certificate even if they have been vaccinated with both doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the guidelines said.

The school needs to be sanitised and must maintain social distancing protocols at all times. If any student shows any symptoms, they will be tested for the virus and in the event of a considerable number of students testing positive in a school, the campus will be closed, as per the guidelines. The State reopened physical classes for classes 1 to 5 from Oct. 25, classes 6 to 8 – Sept. 6 and classes 9 to 12 – Aug. 23.