With just one week to go before September 1, Crimeans have no idea not only what the upcoming school year will be like, but also whether it will even take place. On August 16, the occupation’s Minister of Education, Valentina Lavryk, announced that online classes were being canceled. She tried to present this as an achievement, claiming that high-quality education can only be provided through in-person instruction. Some parents were delighted.

“I don’t even want to hear about distance learning. I can’t stand it — we were in first grade when the pandemic began, and everyone was switched to online learning. I had a nervous breakdown afterward, and my child ended up with huge gaps in her knowledge. This isn’t learning — it’s a travesty,” said the mother of a student at one of Yevpatoria’s schools.

However, many Crimeans interpreted Lavryk’s speech as a signal: the occupiers have no intention of resolving the problems with electricity and communications, nor do they plan to abandon their plans to block the internet.

“Their clunky educational platforms never really worked properly. Sometimes they open with glitches, and other times they just crash altogether. So teachers quickly switch to Zoom, Telegram, or Discord to avoid wasting time. But if they block all of this completely, the very first lag will leave everyone without classes. And no one wants to take that risk," said a computer science teacher at one of Sevastopol’s schools, sharing his observations.

Teachers are particularly concerned about safety during classes. Education officials have designated school vice principals as responsible for coordinating responses during air raid alerts and have reported that basements have been converted into shelters; however, they have not explained how to quickly move several hundred children there at once while continuing to teach them.

“Well, okay, we even had a drill — on how to respond to an alarm. Just once. But what are we supposed to do if it goes off every hour — which is exactly what’s happening right now? Are we just going to spend the whole day going back and forth to the basement? The second issue is electricity. My friend is in Armyansk. How are they supposed to work if they don’t have power for twelve hours at a time? Relying on generators the whole time? Then they’d need 200 liters of diesel a day. That’s a metric ton a week. I just don’t believe they’ll be able to bring it in, and besides, how are they supposed to store it in Armyansk, where drones are constantly flying in?” wonders a elementary school teacher from Simferopol.

In rural schools, too, people aren't very confident that the diesel generators will work properly. But they plan to keep working even without electricity.

“We’ll shorten class periods to fit within daylight hours. We’ll assign less homework. There won’t be any school meals, but it seems the administration plans to provide dry rations. We’ll manage somehow,” said the school principal in the Nizhnegorsk District, full of optimism.

Class periods are being shortened in all schools on the peninsula: half an hour instead of 45 minutes, with a total time spent at school of up to four hours. The occupiers call this a “special learning regimen.” The children are delighted. Teachers are in despair: it’s impossible to cover the curriculum in such a short time. Some parents are already convinced that the educational process will become a mere imitation of itself.

“They’ll just pretend that everyone is studying and that everything is fine. But in classes that last four hours, students no longer take them seriously. Even without any special measures, they’ll post in the chat that classes are canceled for the day, or let us leave halfway through a class, or say there’s no water, no electricity, or an emergency drill. In short, they weren’t teaching much to begin with, and now they’ll just ignore it completely. And you can’t even complain because it’s a ‘special regime,’” says the indignant father of a high school student from the Bakhchysarai district.‍

In the villages on the peninsula that don't have their own schools, parents are even more worried. They've already been made to understand that they'll have to forget about school buses.

“We’ve been given to understand that we might have to drive our kids to school ourselves. Apparently, they’ll even issue gas vouchers for that. But that doesn’t make me happy at all — I’m out in the fields starting at 5 a.m. Who’s going to drive my kids there? And then drive back three hours later to pick them up? Not to mention the cost. You can’t pay with those vouchers — they’re just so you can buy gas,” complains a farmer from the Dzhankoy District.

Parents of schoolchildren believe that, due to fuel shortages, the school year will put a strain on their finances — and not just in remote villages. This is because, in relatively peaceful times, schools were chosen not based on proximity to home, but on other criteria.

“Here, on the outskirts of town, we have a great school. People from all over managed to get their kids into it by any means necessary. They used to drive them there — it wasn’t a problem. There were even traffic jams there before classes started, though it’s nothing compared to Bilohirsk. But now, I think a lot of people are in shock about how to drop off and pick up their kids every day when there’s absolutely no gas anywhere in the area,” says a Bilohirsk resident.

Getting a child ready for school — that is, buying at least a uniform, a backpack, and school supplies — has also become a problem. According to parents’ estimates, the minimum “school starter kit” currently costs 25,000 rubles per child. For families who earned nothing from tourism, lost their jobs due to business closures, or lost their harvest because they couldn’t water their crops, this is an unaffordable amount.