Schools prepare to reopen with added screening as they await Ontario's decision
CBC
As COVID-19 infections rise across Ontario, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) is preparing for in-person classes with additional screening requirements while awaiting word from the province on if schools will reopen in the new year. On Tuesday, Premier Doug Ford said cabinet would meet soon and an announcement would come in the next couple days about whether schools would reopen for in-person learning after the Christmas break. In an email to CBC News, a spokesperson for the WRDSB said the board is complying with a direction from the Ministry of Education, asking school boards to verify the daily screening of all students, staff and essential visitors for the first two weeks of January.
In elementary schools, the board said parents will still be required to complete the province's student COVID-19 screening, which will now have to be initialled by school staff, while secondary school students will log in to a web portal to complete their scan. Schools will develop their own protocols to respond to students who have not completed the verification, said the board. The board said it will follow the same safety measures it has used this academic year to date, including providing ventilation and sanitizing, and requiring masks and handwashing.
The uncertainty about whether schools will reopen after the winter holidays has some parents concerned. "If schools are opened as scheduled, we will be sending our kids back to school with extremely high levels of community transmission," Gabrielle Brankston, a PhD candidate in epidemiology at the University of Guelph and mother of three, told CBC's Metro Morning. "The sheer volume of cases so far has already impaired case detection and contact tracing." Brankston said that if the province decides to postpone a return to in-person classes, it would leave little time for parents to make alternate arrangements for their kids, something she said could disproportionately affect lower-income families. "If we're not going to hear for another two days, we have three days to prepare our kids for online learning, and teachers to prepare for online lessons," she said. "It's a big switch."
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