Regina school closed until Oct. 19 after positive COVID-19 case

Marion McVeety school in Regina is closed until Oct. 19 after someone at the school tested positive for COVID-19. 

The school division said the closure is to allow for two weeks to pass before students and staff are in the building again. The division said the person who tested positive was a staff member who was last at the school on Oct. 2. 

"The decision to close the school is based on safety reasons and because the staff member that tested positive has had multiple contacts with staff and students," said Regina Public Schools spokesperson Terry Lazarou.

Lazarou said the division consulted with public health and decided the closure would be the best option. He said if a positive case happened at a different school, the division would look at that situation on a case-by-case basis. 

Marion McVeety's 367 students will start online classes Thursday, he said, while the entire school is being cleaned. 

"[Online learning] has been set up in anticipation of this. It may take a little while for individual students to plug into this, as it were but we're focusing on continuity of learning," Lazarou said. "When they return to school on Oct. 19, they can slide right back into the learning they were doing in the classroom."

Lazarou said teachers will contact individual students tomorrow. He said an automated message went out to parents Tuesday night and staff were at the school Wednesday in case parents didn't get the message. A letter was also sent out Wednesday with more information, he said. 

Jennifer Dixon has a daughter in Grade 8 at the school. She said an automated message wasn't quite enough on Tuesday night because it came in too late after the family had gone to sleep. She said an email would have been better. 

Dixon said her daughter was disappointed when they did get the message, but that the two had talked about this scenario when school first started.

"We're in a pandemic," she said. "Eventually, somebody connected to the school was going to get sick."

Dixon said she got a call from the school about the closure Wednesday afternoon. She said closing the school was the right move. 

"It's a small building. So I think they did the right thing in closing down right away after one case and cleaning the place and waiting to see if there's other cases connected," Dixon said. "I'd rather do it that way than be sending my kid to school not knowing what's going on."

Dixon said there should have been a provincial plan in place for when a student tests positive. 

"I think the province really dropped the ball," Dixon said. "Every school board seems to be doing something different when they get a case. And I really feel like at the very least, we need to have sort of a comprehensive plan for the whole province so that every parent, no matter where the kid goes to school, knows what to expect."

Holy Cross High School in Saskatoon has been declared to be in an outbreak by the Saskatchewan Health Authority, but classes are continuing as planned. 

"It's just too confusing," Dixon said. "If my kids were going to that school, I don't think that I would be sending them." 

Dixon said that when McVeety does reopen, she will be comfortable sending her child again. 

"The COVID cases are inevitable. The school is working really hard and doing a really good job to keep the kids as healthy as they can, and I don't think that there's anything else that we can do other than just go with it," she said. 

As of Friday, Oct. 2, the province said there had been 18 cases of COVID-19 found in 14 different schools since the start of the school year and five in daycares. Seven of the cases are considered recovered.

Staff at Marion McVeety are being told to self-monitor and call public health at the first sign of symptoms, Lazarou said. He said he isn't aware of any COVID-19 transmission in the school yet, but more people may test positive. 

Lazarou said this is the first case of COVID-19 in a Regina Public School.

"We hope to learn from this, but we think we've done it all as well as we possibly can."