Northeast boards making plans to re-open schools in September despite funding uncertainty

We're starting to get a picture of what the start of the school year could look like in northeastern Ontario.

But so far, only one board has made its re-opening plans public.

The District School Board Ontario North East went over its re-opening plan for several hours on Monday during a virtual meeting.

Like all boards across the province, it has prepared a plan for having students back in schools, a plan for continuing education online and a third scenario that's a blend of the two, with kids going to class every second day.

Hand washing would be built in a student's daily schedule, teachers and other staff would wear masks in certain situations, and high schoolers would only learn one subject each day so they don't have to move between classrooms.

Buying personal protective equipment for staff is estimated to cost the board — which runs English public schools from Hearst to Temagami — $127,000 per month or about $1.4 million for the school year.

Education director Lesleigh Dye says in her meetings with the Ministry of Education there has been a pledge of extra funding to cover these costs, but no specifics yet.

She says the education minister will decide whether students are back in class in September, picking one model for the entire province, but she says in the first few weeks of the fall there will be a chance for a "regional delivery mode."

"My understanding is that the ministry is going to allow some flexibility at the local level," Dye told trustees.

She said even if schools are totally re-opened, parents can choose to continue having their children learning from home. A board survey shows 92 per cent of parents are prepared to send their kids back to school. 

Dye says while the board will work closely with public health officials and heed their advice, they have to follow the direction of the Ministry of Education. 

"If we can bring the students safely to our school on a daily basis then we absolutely will," she said. 

"If the virus is in the community, then there's a strong likelihood the virus would get into the school."

School boards were given about a month to draw up re-opening plans and get them to Queen's Park for Aug. 4.

Most boards in northeastern Ontario were under the impression that the education minister would give further direction in August and are not making their plans public until next month.

Although it has been reported the minister will make that announcement this week. 

"We're now dealing in the COVID world, so really, anything goes," says Jay Aspin, chair of the the Near North District School Board.

"We're not anticipating anything different, but if there is something different, we're prepared to roll with it."

The English public board for North Bay and Nipissing is set to debate its re-opening plan at a board meeting on Thursday, but the details have yet to be released.

Aspin says the board is dealing with a "double whammy" with COVID-19 and three North Bay high schools set to merge into two this fall.

He says his preference is to have students back in class.

"I think there's a risk in anything you do," says Aspin. 

"I think there's a higher risk in the children's mental attitudes."

The District School Board North East says some of its smaller schools have only been cleaned every second day, which can't continue during a pandemic.

The extra cleaning staff, plus hand sanitizer is every classroom is expected to cost as much as $2.2 million this coming school year.

Laura Walton, president of the Ontario School Board Council of Unions representing 55,000 school support staff across the province, says the government has to start talking about how it's going to pay for this return to school. 

"If these things are going to be happening, we need to make these investments. Because we're talking about bringing on people, so if we're going to do that, these hiring processes need to start soon," she says.

Walton says she worries that school boards will be left footing the bill for extra cleaning staff, but also the infrastructure needed to have hand washing stations in each classroom.

"Absolutely I'm worried, and rather than just rubber stamping, I call on school boards to push back with the government," she says.

Chantal Rancourt, union president for English Catholic elementary teachers in the Sudbury area, also worries about the general confusion about the coming school year and the lack of information coming from Queen's Park.

"I think it would worry anyone because the fact of the matter is school starts in September. You're dealing with the reality that you can't make mistakes. You can't say 'Whoops, we shouldn't have done that,'" she says.

Rancourt says the recent spike of 12 COVID-19 cases in Sudbury, most of them under the age of 19, "is a good example of how quickly it can spread."

But she doesn't think there's a number of active cases that should automatically mean schools stay closed.

 "I don't think there's a magic number, you can go from 20 to 100 in a heartbeat. You can go from 20 to zero," says Rancourt.

 "If things aren't safe, it's just a recipe for disaster."