Hamilton school boards and unions on standby as Ontario considers extended winter break

Hamilton's school boards and unions are on standby as the provincial government considers an extended winter break or starting classes remotely in the new year.

This comes after Education Minister Stephen Lecce said he's talking to health officials and "looking at solutions that may include some period out of class" at the beginning of January, but has not yet made a decision.

Lecce said he will announce a plan in the next week or two to allow parents to prepare, but Premier Doug Ford told media on Tuesday nothing is confirmed.

That's after the Council of Ontario Directors of Education said it had proposed starting the new semester with virtual schooling to allow students and staff to self-isolate after any holiday celebrations.

Hamilton's local school boards have been planning for a potential pivot to full online learning, but weren't discussing any changes or extensions to the winter break.

The province seriously considering this move may force educators and families to adapt again during the pandemic.

"Some of the safest places are environments like schools with structured routines and layered approach to public health measures are in place," Manny Figueiredo, the director of the public school board, said on Tuesday.

"Our key is to keep schools open and community spread coming into schools is our greatest concern."

Thanksgiving weekend brought COVID-19 uptick

Figueiredo has confidence in schools but said after seeing an uptick in school-related COVID-19 cases around Thanksgiving, he worries about what community spread could look like in January — and how it may enter classrooms.

"Will people be tempted to gather? It's a two-week window, not a three-day Thanksgiving weekend ... I'm worried about [cases] coming into schools at a rapid rate," he said.

"If you were going to extend the closure and everyone goes to remote learning, then I would recommend it be sometime after the holiday break to prevent the spread from the community coming into schools.

Figueiredo said he would ideally want schools to remain open but would support a short-term closure early next year to prevent community spread from holiday gatherings infecting students and educators.

Despite local schools seeing new cases of COVID-19 most days, public health officials have maintained schools aren't leading to more spread of the virus.

Jeff Sorensen, president of the Hamilton-Wentworth Elementary Teachers' Local union, said schools aren't adequately prepared to make the jump to full online learning.

"There's still the inequity of access to devices both with teachers and students. There's the capacity of the system. We know many teachers and students don't have high speed internet which online learning is based on," he said on Tuesday.

"You've had teachers who have worked very hard twice, if not three times, to set up classrooms, to make plans, to get programming happening and then to have to change."

Still, Sorensen said he worries about how many COVID-19 cases are in schools that we don't know about. He isn't as optimistic as Figueiredo.

"I don't know whether it's correlation or causation but numbers started creeping up when schools reopened and that's not surprising because protocols, despite what Doug Ford thinks, were always looser in schools than in the general community."

Daryl Jerome, president of the local Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, also expressed concern about the rising infections in the community.

"The significant rise of cases in this province coupled with a governmental response that can best be described as confusing and at worst, negligent, has almost necessitated this [winter break] extension," he wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

He added HWDSB will start allowing high school educators to teach afternoon virtual classes remotely instead of at school.

Ontario needs to make decision soon

Pat Daly, chair of Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board said his board is ready to listen to the province, but is confused by the news.

"I don't understand what the benefit would be if the thought is to extend it by a week or something," he said.

"We clearly would follow the ministry of education, provincial government and public health direction."

If the province does decide to extend the winter break or start classes remotely in January, Figueiredo hopes the decision will be made sooner than later.

"It'd be better to deal with all the transition for students while they're still in school ... we need time to plan and implement and families need time to think about what their plans are."

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