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Uncertainty clouds first week of school year

Students and staff reflect on organizing school safely during COVID
Oakville schools now have students inside them for the first time in months. | Thomas Desormeaux
Oakville schools now have students inside them for the first time in months. | Thomas Desormeaux

Oakville schools are in swing again this week as the majority of classes for elementary and secondary students began. Attending school is very different during a pandemic and the Halton District School Board is rushing to make changes even as the semester started.

Andréa Grebenc, the Chair of the Halton District School Board. | Halton District School Board
Andréa Grebenc, the Chair of the Halton District School Board. | Halton District School Board

"Students need to feel comfortable in order to learn," says Andréa Grebenc, the Chair of the Halton Board.

Grebenc says that planning for this school year was especially difficult for the Board, it's teachers, it's students and their families. Partly due to the timeline laid out by the Ministry of Education.

"The whole system of boards is very complex," she says. "If you can imagine, there's over 66,000 students over 100 facilities that must be managed."

Students need to feel comfortable in order to learn.

COVID-19 case numbers are rising day by day in Ontario. Today, there were nine new cases in Oakville alone. In the midst of this, there are new concerns while planning or attending school. 

Virtual school vs. physical school

One decision parents had to make this summer was whether to send their kids to school in person, or sign up for virtual education. Learning from the comfort of your home, behind a computer screen is undoubtedly safer, but experts agree that the socialization aspect of attending school in person can also be important.

Vandy Widyalankara, Halton District School Board Student Trustee | Halton District School Board
Vandy Widyalankara, Halton District School Board Student Trustee | Halton District School Board

Vandy Widyalankara is an Oakville high school student who goes to White Oaks Secondary. She also serves as one of Halton Board's two student trustees. She has heard from many people who have decided to follow the virtual path.

"I do know a number of students - friends and people who reached out to me - who are doing full virtual lessons," she says. Her brother, an elementary school student, is one of them. "They usually are making the decision out of concern for a family member who has pre-existing conditions. It's, of course, a little bit about personal comfort level as well."

Quality of learning

Halton has set up three elementary schools that will run entirely online. The lone virtual high school has over 3500 students, making it the largest facility in the entire Board.

Should COVID numbers continue to rise, or if there are significant outbreaks at schools, Halton is ready to shift from in-person classes to a hybrid or entirely virtual model for teaching.

There are concerns among some that the quality of education will be worse without face-to-face interaction between students and instructors.

"Another worry is  the teaching and how much information students will be able to retain in an online environment," says Widyalankara. "Quite a few students have reached out to me to talk about how independent, online learning requires more focus and discipline."

Public health guidelines

The main framework guiding the 2020-21 school year come from Ministry of Education. According to its plan, students are organized into separate cohorts, which dictate the days they will be attending school in person. One group may be going in on Monday and Tuesday while the other takes Thursday and Friday, Wednesdays alternate.

When inside a physical "brick-and-mortar school," students must maintain physical distance and keep their masks on. These measures are all designed to stop COVID from spreading across the school, should one student get sick.

Testing

One concern for Grebenc is the availability of COVID testing. Getting a test can take days in some areas of Halton and receiving the results days more.

"If you have one child in a class that has symptoms, it can affect the entire class," she says. "If you have a class of 20 students, those other 19 students and the teacher would need to go into isolation. Students might also have siblings and that could affect other classes and other grades or schools."

Grebenc believes that the Ontario government needs to ensure that each school board has access to its own testing services.

"I would like the province to increase testing capacity exponentially," she says. "We need rapid testing and I would like that to be a big part of the jobs of those public health nurses that were promised. We need to assess students as soon as possible, within a few days to prevent any domino effect that could happen."

Communication from the Ministry

In Wadyalankara's view, the thing schools need most right now is clear communication from the government. 

"The board has gotten as much student input as they can under the circumstances. The situation changes really rapidly, the one thing that I see that most people want is clarity," she says.

Over the summer there was uncertainty about how many students would be in each class.

Discussion between boards and the Ministry of Education is now conducted over brief call on Mondays. Grebenc says that there are usually only three or four questions answered during that time.

"Proper notice, better explanations, people want clarity," says Wadyalankara.

Last Friday, the province announced a new webpage that shows updates on active COVID cases in Ontario's schools. Oakville currently sits at three.

"I think that's great because parents can make a better, more informed decision," says Wadyalankara.

What's next?

As COVID rates fluctuate and we approach a possible second wave, Oakville schools will have to remain flexible in their approach to safe, effective education.

Should cases rise among students, the method of instruction might have to change. 

"He [the Minister of Education] could make a determination that the elementary schools are going into a hybrid adaptive model and we have that model ready to put into place," says Grebenc. "So you can move up and down the scale."


What's next?


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