Schools work best when they are solid communities. Children thrive when they know that their parents and teachers are working together and when there is clear trust there. Teachers and SNAs don't end up in special education by chance. They choose it and they normally love it.

That's why this open/don't open debate is so awful. It is pitting parents and teachers against each other. Parents of children must find it very hard to recognise the special education teacher described in the media. The one that doesn't care, the one that doesn't want to work.

So we have to ask why would 11,000 education staff attend a webinar on public health advice yesterday? Why are teachers, principals and SNAs crying out to be heard? They can't all be work shy can they? They can't all be heartless, deaf to the plight of stressed parents, can they?

Could it be that they don't trust the mantra that " schools are safe"? Perhaps they gave watched their colleagues in England lose their lives. Perhaps they know that the children in their care cannot be guaranteed to be safe in a classroom situation.

Most of all they know one thing. They have had to fight the Government for every single resource for these children. Vulnerable children have not been allowed access the psychological reports that would allow them to access scarce resources. They KNOW the Government do not care.

Schools have picked up the slack for these children for years. There is little OT, Speech and Language or psychological expertise available to these children and now, when the schools are closed, that absolute dearth of resources is clearly seen.

Schools have, for too long, been the only resource available to these children and the only reason the schools have the little resources they have is because they fought tooth and nail for them. No wonder parents are missing the schools.

I don't know if the schools will reopen this week or next but I do hope that when they do, parents will understand the wish that school staff had to stay alive and that the children they work with would stay alive too. It is, unfortunately, as simple as that.