By Pepper Parr
August 11th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
It was the end of a long week – with the week ahead not looking all that much better.
Stuart Miller and his team are bushed. They have been given their marching orders by the province; they now have to make it happen with what they have.
Every elementary student will be in their home classroom – teachers will come to them; the students will take recess and lunch together and not mix or mingle with other students. In some grades they will be asked to wear masks.
There are likely to be some classes that will have in excess of 25 students – some report that there will be classes with 30 students – when you add the teacher and the EA that is a pretty full room making it difficult to stick to the six foot apart rule.
It is going to be a challenge to keep the different classes apart come recess and lunch – a scheduling nightmare.
The secondary students will do a day in a classroom – just 15 in the class, the following day they will work from hone on-line where they will be taught synchronously by their teacher.
Parents who are concerned about the safety of their children, teachers who are apprehensive and an HR department that needs to make sure they have access to supply teachers who may have to replace classroom teachers who decide they do not want to be in classrooms.
Custodial people have to be hired as well.
The teachers were sent a 79 page document setting out the way the school board administration expects things to work in a situation that is both dynamic and fluid.
Parents will be getting a document with much of the same information on Monday and are asked to let the Board of Education know what they plan to do with their children.
“Some parents won’t get back to us” said Miller. “We will have principals at the schools calling those parents to find out what they want to do.
“We also have number of households who have more than one student going to high school. That will mean each student having access to a laptop computer which for some families may not be in their budget.
The Board will ensure that everyone has what they need to be able to take part on those half days when high school students are being taught synchronously as a class on-line.
There will also be some students who will attend a class within the school due to limitations they have with on-line learning.
The teachers doing the online teaching will do so from the schools – perhaps not from the actual classroom but their base will be the school.
Delays at Nelson high school where additions are underway to accommodate the transfer of students from Bateman high school to Nelson – with Bateman to be closed at some future date – will be delayed due to construction issues that resulted from the shutdown of the site when a worker was tested positive.
The province has budgeted for some 500 nurses who will be available to schools. With 105 schools in the Region and 44 School Districts in the province those nurses are going to be stretched pretty thin.
Exactly what the nurses are going to do is not clear. What is clear to Miller is that he has an excellent working relationship with the Medical Officer of Health, (MOH) Dr Hamid Megani. All the bases will be covered.
The overriding concern is having a procedure in place for those schools where a hot spot turns up. The Board wants to be able to move quickly and isolate any outbreak and ensure that if there is one it is limited to a classroom and not school.
Everyone is working full out on ensuring that they get it right the first time.
Miller, who has been an educator for more than 35 years, said that what he is going through now “is not something they taught us in principal school.”
Getting the students to school is another challenge that is being worked on. How many children will be permitted on each bus – will there be enough bus drivers. And how will the bus routes and schedules be worked out. The service is operated by an arm’s length operation that serves both the Separate and Public Boards.
In the past few weeks the number of new infections in the Region have been low – 0 in some days and the MOH has been able to move very quickly tracing who the infected person has met with. That same dexterity will be used to track the students.
There are dozens of pinch points – the school board administrators believe they have identified all of them but the words “fluid” and “dynamic” are used to describe everything they have to deal with.
There are a lot of “not sure” statements being made. A lot of trepidation on the part of parents, teachers and board administrators.
The public isn’t hearing a word from the trustees.
If the infections in each municipality can be kept low that should be reflected in the school environment.
What happens when parents who have worked from home begin returning to their offices and the colder weather becomes part of everyday life?
We are going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
It’s ironic that the Director of Education closed two schools and wanted students to be bused across town. Now we don’t have enough space and there’s too few buses.