Solution offered to boarders
BOARDING school students could isolate at home on their family properties for the two weeks of the school holidays, and then have a COVID-19 test on returning to Queensland, Fairholme College principal Linda Evens has suggested.
As it stands, any boarding school student who went home to parts of regional New South Wales outside the border bubble for the school holidays would have to spend two weeks in isolation when returning.
The issue was made redundant for a large number of students after Moree was added to the Queensland border bubble, but a number of students still live outside the bubble.
“If it is safe to travel home to Moree and back to boarding schools next term, without two weeks solitary confinement then it is safe for the remaining New South Wales boarding students, all hailing from properties, to do the same,” Dr Evans wrote in a letter to Annastacia Palaszczuk across the weekend.
“These girls can all adhere to self-isolation for the twoweek holiday period, with a statutory declaration.
“They can be tested prior to re-entry into Queensland and tested again before re-entering boarding. They can. They will.
“They want to, if it means an opportunity to travel home; to avoid two weeks of isolation at a time when others are learning, or others are preparing for their final external exams.”
Toowoomba North MP Trevor Watts said the rules around boarder exemptions had to be clearer.
“People who genuinely need to enter Queensland are being blocked – yet 400 people can come from Victoria for the AFL grand final,” he said.
Only student left
Despite living in a coronavirus-free district, Justine McNally’s son Henry Maunder, 11, is a boarder in Year 6 at Toowoomba Anglican School and is the only student unable to get home to the family’s northern NSW property for the holidays.
“They need some kind of robust online system so on a case-by-case basis they can assess the risk of where you’re from, not just a blanket postcode or government area,” she said.
The family live about 35km from Moree, which was added to a “travel bubble” list of border towns by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Friday but Henry’s house is 10km outside the postcode exemption limit.
“(Henry’s) quite a stoic child, but he’s very frustrated by it, and I think on Friday he was most disappointed because he knows now all these other children in our district are coming home.”
Ms McNally said even Emma, 9, missed her sibling and calls the system “not fair”.
Henry said he felt the COVID-19 rules designed for the cities did not take into account his school holiday routine in the bush.