Saskatoon Public Schools redeploying staff amid rising COVID-19 cases

The Saskatoon Public School Division says it's redeploying staff to take over everything from classroom teaching to caretaking, due to a recent jump in COVID-19 cases and a shortage of teachers.

The school division said there were 439 positive cases self-reported to its schools in the first eight days back after the holidays.

In a letter to families on Wednesday, Saskatoon Public noted that total of cases is the same as it saw in the first four months of the school year. It attributed the sharp spike to the Omicron coronavirus variant and the reporting of positive results from at-home rapid tests.

The school division said the rising case volume is impacting its staff and disrupting some classes, forcing it to move around resources.

"To address staffing challenges, we are reassigning educational staff from other division positions to act as substitutes in classrooms," the letter outlined. "We are also redeploying staff from other support positions to fill in for caretaking and administrative staff in schools."

In an interview on CBC's Saskatoon Morning Thursday, Saskatoon Public's director of education, Shane Skjerven, said teachers are getting creative in managing the situation, but it hasn't been easy.

"I'm not going to speak for every individual staff member, but I think it's fair to say that, absolutely, they're tired — they're tired of this pandemic. It is stressful and there is increased pressure," he said. "But many continue to come to work every day and show up to do the best they can."

With 10 elementary school classes now online and other students or teachers absent, Skjerven estimated most Saskatoon public schools are between 75 and 80 per cent full these days.

He said bus transportation hasn't seen any substantial disruptions so far, but school administrators continue to monitor it.

"We have our contingency plans in place as best we can with the resources we have, and we'll continue to adapt," Skjerven said, noting assessment meetings are held multiple times a day. "We're ready to pivot, if we need to."

As of Thursday morning, Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools (GSCS) said it's had a total of 460 COVID-19 cases reported since Monday.

The division said it's also seeing an increase in staff absences, mostly because they're ill, isolating, or taking care of ill or isolating children. 

"So far, we're able to reallocate staff within any given school to cover for absences that cannot be filled with substitutes," GSCS spokesperson Derrick Kunz wrote in an email to CBC News.

"That might mean the level of specialized services for students [like extra literacy supports] is reduced. We're not there yet, but realistically, we may get to a point where we need to reassign staff or shift resources more broadly."