Toronto board wants to know what parents think as it pushes province to change back-to-school policies

Thestar.com
August 11, 2020
Kristen Rushowy

Toronto families will be asked if they intend to send their children back to school with regular-sized classes, and if they would consider doing so if classes were smaller -- should the province provide funding to make that happen.

Those questions will go out to parents starting Tuesday as the Toronto District School Board pushes the provincial government to change its back-to-school plans.

School board trustees will be voting this week on a motion to ask that masks be made mandatory students in junior kindergarten to Grade 3 -- not just for older students, as is currently planned -- in a bid to allay concerns raised by parents and teachers.

They will also consider a proposal seeking funding from the province for more teachers, as well as money to improve ventilation in buildings and to make sure all washrooms have touchless handwashing stations, among other items.

“I am moving the mask requirement because public health agencies agree that children over two years should wear masks indoors, and when social distancing is not available,” said Beaches-East York Trustee Michelle Aarts, noting that Toronto bylaws mandate masks in indoor spaces.

“We want to start from a position of ‘an abundance of caution,’ with proper education, training, options, and flexibility for different age groups, and then revise protocols as needed,” she said.

Aarts added that her youngest child is seven years old, and attends “an overcapacity school of over 1,000 students,” while another child has health issues.

“Masks in schools are a minimum requirement for me to choose to send my youngest back to school,” she said.

Like boards across the province, the TDSB is now trying to gauge parents’ interest in having their children return to the classroom as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Families must decide if they want to send their children to school full-time, or prefer remote learning at home. All boards are warning that if parents change their minds after choosing the online option, their children could be put on a wait-list.

High school students in large, urban boards will have the chance to switch from in-person to at-home learning between “quadmesters.”

The government has mandated masks for students starting in Grade 4, and also set high school class sizes at 15 students in the larger boards. Elementary class sizes will remain as they were, which had meant up to 30 students in a classroom.

The province is providing about $30 million to the Ontario’s 72 boards to hire additional teachers. It is also hiring 500 public health nurses, in part to assist with random COVID-19 testing in high schools.

The government is spending more than $309 million on education costs related to COVID-19, which Premier Doug Ford has said will result in the highest per-student expenditure of any province.

Experts at Sick Kids and other children’s hospitals, however, have said that smaller classes are critical to the safe return, along with physical distancing and good hand hygiene.

On Monday, Ford said he’s confident about the fall restart, “but to say I’m confident no one’s going to catch the virus -- it’s just not realistic with two million (students) going back into the system, 160,000 teachers. But I do believe we have the best plan in the entire country.”

Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government is doing everything it can to “de-risk” the return to classrooms. “We’re doing everything we can to follow the evidence, the science and the emerging advice of our public health agencies, to put in layers of prevention,” Lecce said.

In a letter to Ford, Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca called on the premier to keep class sizes small. His party has calculated that the government needs to spend $3.2 billion to hire enough teachers, caretakers and to ensure student and staff safety.

Del Duca also said the province could consider delaying the start of the school year “to ensure that we get it right. This can be done using the same regional approach that’s been used for the reopening of our economy, recognizing that a one-size-fits-all plan may not be advisable.”

The TDSB has said many of it schools are older and have small classrooms, so it will be difficult to enforce physical distancing if classes remain at their current size.