At a news conference Monday, Premier Scott Moe announced further resources going towards the safe return to schools.
Premier Moe had announced in a Facebook post the plans to provide an additional $40 million to school divisions and a delay to the start of the school year to Sept. 8. On Monday, Moe provided further details about the safe return plans.
“This year that excitement has been mixed with some anxiety and I understand that,” Premier Scott Moe said. “Today, I want to provide as much clarity as we can. I want to ensure we are providing more information, more time, and more testing capacity to ensure a safe return to school this fall.”
Among the announcements Monday:
Moe said the province will allocate $40 million from the $200 million provincial COVID-19 contingency fund for additional costs related to ensuring the safety of students and staff through the pandemic in the classroom. This $40 million is in addition to funding already announced and will match $40 million that school divisions realized in savings, for a total of $80 million.
It will be allocated as follows:
• $10 million will be allocated to the Ministry of Education to purchase masks, PPE and other supplies.
• $10 million goes to enhance non-classroom options like distance learning to help ensure immunocompromised and medically fragile students have continuous access to learning; and
• $20 million will be available to school divisions on an application basis for pandemic-related costs including staffing and sanitation supplies.
Specific details of the plan will be somewhat different by school division, Moe said. The premier said operation plans are being finalized and will be posted online and communicated to parents and students no later than August 26.
Students will now return to class on the Tuesday after Labour Day, Sept. 8. Moe said this extra time will provide teachers and staff two to four additional days to be in the schools to be trained on the new protocols, make sure classrooms are reconfigured properly, and hold virtual meetings with parents to discuss the new procedures.
School divisions have been working to implement initiatives like block scheduling, cohorting, and considerations for alternating school days if that should be necessary, and to reduce class sizes if necessary.
As well, the province is working toward daily testing capacity of 4,000 tests by the beginning of September, and will continue to offer testing for anyone who wants a test. Students will also be able to take part in randomized testing with parental consent at their school. Moe said participating schools will be selected based on a number of factors such as number of students in the school and if the community is experiencing a recent surge of new cases. In school public health visits for routine childhood vaccinations will now include COVID-19 testing, again with parental consent.
Further information will be available soon to parents regarding providing consent and other testing options. All teachers and staff are encouraged to seek testing prior to returning to school.
During the question and answer session with reporters Moe was asked whether he would apologize for releasing a plan that caused anxiety.
Moe responded "no. Most certainly, the plan that we had came forward was built to be adaptable, to elevate or de-escalate given the concerns not only from parents but from Public Health as well." He said the plan was built to address concerns not only broadly across the province but also in individual school divisions.
When asked if he would take responsibility for the delay and the rushed schedule, Moe responded "there is no delay -- we still continue to follow the levels of operation that we have here in the province. We have opened the door to a Level 2, we have seen a number of school divisions that have moved into that space with mandatory masking across the division." But he also pointed to Chinook division that had three different levels for their Hutterian, rural and urban schools.
"Our plan has always been developed to be adaptable to the situation that we're facing. The plan isn't changing. What we are adding to is the funding that is available to our school divisions."
Moe was also asked about class sizes and the issue of ventilation in schools. Moe responded by saying they were encouraging school divisions to "use all of the capital assets" that they can to reduce class size, and said it was an actice discussion.
On ventilation, Moe pointed to funding the government has made over the last number of years for 65 new schools as well as for school renovations, including new HVAC systems for school divisions. He also pointed to the $7 1/2 billion two-year capital stimulus with some of that going to education facilities, with $26 million provided most recently.
"The maintenance renewal of our HVAC systems across the province has received ample funding," Moe said.
