EAST CENTRAL — The North East School Division (NESD) has applied for up to $2 million in additional expenditures from the provincial government for COVID-19 expenses.
These expenses include sound systems, water bottle filling stations, additional disinfectant, additional online teachers and more personal protective equipment.
According to Don Rempel, director of education for the NESD, as more requirements for masks are added to the schools, teachers are having an added difficulty of articulating the lessons to the students.
“Students have adjusted well to the school safety protocols in place. We’ve had more and more requirements for masks, regardless of physical distancing,” Rempel said.
“As teachers wear their masks in the front of the classroom, close to students, we find if they use a sound-field system it takes some strain off the vocal cords for the teachers and it provides better audio for all the students in the classroom.”
Rempel said most elementary schools in the NESD already include speakers for conveying the teacher’s lessons to students with auditory processing difficulties.
This new funding will allow the speakers to be added to the other schools in the region, and replace some of the older equipment.
The estimated cost of the sound systems is $303,000.
“We thought this would be a good way to replace and enhance our technology, as far as sound-field systems across the school division, and also to meet the needs of teachers at this time as they’re wearing personal protective equipment in their teaching.”
He said that in addition to the speakers, schools within the NESD are in the process of transitioning from water fountains to water bottle filling stations.
“We are all quite familiar with the water fountains we grew up with in schools,” Rempel said. “As it becomes more environmentally friendly for students and staff to have permanent water bottles and to manage their own water bottles, it makes sense to have water bottle filling stations.”
He added that this will also be a good addition to the schools post-COVID-19 to have these practices in place to lower risks of getting sick during annual flu seasons.
The estimated cost is $160,000 for 30 stations along with the installation.
As students are continuing to transition to and from online learning, Rempel said part of the funding they are requesting is to hire additional full-time teachers to handle the online demand.
“We have a little bit of a trickle in demand from in-person learning to online learning overtime. So there’s not a big shift from any one school or any age level, but there has been parents choosing to have their students online delivery from home overtime.”
To fulfill these demands, Rempel said there will be both new full-time positions filled from part-time contracts within the division, as well as hiring a new teacher.
The addition of the “1.6 full-time equivalent” online teachers is estimated to cost $105,000.
The funds they are applying for are through the Safe School Plan Funding, which had previously been used by the board for portable sinks in the schools, additional hand sanitizer, face shields, disposable isolation gowns and gloves and face masks.
Approximately $465,000 of COVID-19 related expenditures have been incurred by the NESD between Sept. 1 to Nov. 30.
The application to submit these funding requests was passed by the board at their November meeting.
This served as the first meeting for the newly elected board trustees.
