After announcing over the weekend on Facebook that the return to school would be delay, Premier Scott Moe gave more details why.
The school year is to start Sept. 8, half a week to a week later than schools had initially planned.
In a press conference with Dr. Saqib Shahab Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer, on Aug. 17, Moe said he sought to address concerns he’s heard over the past several weeks, noting that the usual excitement about a return to school is “mixed with some anxiety.”
“And I understand,” he said. “I know most parents want to see their kids go back to school, but they also have concerns and they have questions. They are looking for more clarity on how things are going to work and what things are going to look like. So today, I want to provide as much clarity as we can.”
The announcement came as the opposition New Democratic Party has been calling for more clarity from the government on its COVID-19 back-to-school plan.
Moe said the provincial government would be providing “more resources, more information, more time and more testing capacity to ensure a safe return to school this fall.”
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. This is in addition to $40 million in savings schools realized from not operating in the springtime.
The $40 million in contingency funding will see half made available to school divisions on an application basis for pandemic-related costs including staffing and sanitation supplies. Another $10 million will be available to enhance non-classroom options like distance learning to help ensure immunocompromised and medically fragile students have continuous access to learning across school divisions, available on an application basis. The last $10 million will be allocated to the Ministry of Education to centrally procure masks, PPE and other supplies for school divisions.
Moe noted all teachers and school staff are being encouraged to seek testing prior to returning to school and at frequent points throughout the school year. Priority access to testing will be established for teachers and school staff in the coming days, with referrals available through 811.
Targeted school testing is a key focus of the expanded testing plans, with plans including targeted monitoring, testing of students with parental consent, and priority testing for teachers and school staff. Participating schools will be selected based on a number of factors, such as the 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, where parental consent is granted, Moe noted.
School divisions are to release their school-specific operation plans online no later than Aug. 26, to allow parents to decide what they will be doing. This may mean some parents refraining sending their kids to school, choosing distance learning instead. Moe said individual schools will be somewhat different. These include things like bussing protocols and which entrances students will use.
As for the extra days before school starts, Moe said, “It will provide teachers and other staff two to four day to be in the school, to be trained on protocols, make sure their classrooms are configured properly, and in some cases, hold virtual meetings with parents to discuss exactly what the new procedures are.”
The terms and conditions of the collective bargaining agreement currently held with the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation will be honoured, the government noted in a release. Instructional hours will not be extended, meaning depending on the school division, there will be two to four fewer instructional days this school year.
School divisions have been working within the provincial guidelines and public health guidance provided through the Safe Schools Plan to implement initiatives like block scheduling, cohorting, and considerations for alternating school days. Under the new funding made available to divisions, additional staff to reduce class sizes in exceptional circumstances will be considered.
Moe said school divisions are encouraged “to use all the capital assets they have, to the greatest ability they can, to reduce class size.”
He noted that if one school has larger class sizes, but another school a mile away has additional capacity, it should be used. He didn’t specifically say students would be reassigned to different schools, however.
Shahab noted that occasional clusters in school or a family of a student, but “it should not always be a cause of concern,” he said, adding it should not cause panic.
With enhanced testing, there will be cases of students who are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, he noted.
If a student is sick, they should stay home. He pointed out, with cough and cold season coming, that 99 times out of 100, testing does not turn out to be COVID. If they test negative, they can come back when better.
Moe noted how there have been concerns at each stage of Saskatchewan’s reopening, be it retail, or health services, or athletics, but they have all been done successfully.
School divisions are currently preparing plans for submission to the Ministry of Education this week for considerations of altering operations of high density schools, primarily in collegiate settings, under Level 3 of the Safe Schools Plan.
Shahab said, “It’s really important for children to be in schools, both for their education and for their social development and mental health.”
Not clear enough: NDP
Ryan Meili, the leader of the opposition New Democrats, said Moe’s announcement still doesn’t provide the clarity necessary for going back to school with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Today, we were expecting some kind of an announcement that would actually address the concerns that Saskatchewan people have been raising, he said, adding his party has been hearing concerns from parents, grandparents and school staff.
“We’ve seen other provinces come up with plans that are much more serious than what we’ve seen in Saskatchewan and we were expecting today to see an answer to that, something that would make it clear that this government understands how important it is that we get this right, because it is crucial that we get this right,” he said.
The NDP leader said if the province doesn’t get this right, it jeopardizes the economic recovery.
Meili said there was zero clarity when it came to how the government will deal with outbreaks.
“There were no clear guidelines when it came to the use of masks across the province. We didn’t even get a clear answer on how it will be decided whether a school or school division is at Level 1 or Level 2 or Level 3,” he said.
“Now we just saw this government once again pass the buck down onto school divisions to make the major decisions, pass the buck on to parents, even heard the premier passing the buck and calling for personal responsibility from kids as young as six.
“I’d like to see the premier take some personal responsibility here. He is in charge of this government. He’s the one who’s supposed to be leading the way and providing us with a decent plan.”
Meili said the schools’ deadline of Aug. 26 to release their detailed plans is a very short window for parents to make a decision on whether or not to send their child to school.
“This is something where the lack of clarity, the confusion coming out of this government, even though the message we heard from the premier around those choices, makes it really hard for parents to know.”
The NDP leader said the announcement was about damage control.
“This was never about getting the school time right. He failed to do that in June. He failed in July, and in August, now he’s failing again. But he’s trying to spin this way out of this without doing the real work.”
The NDP’s own return to school plan includes boosting COVID-19 testing to ensure timely results, reducing class sizes, providing dedicated COVID-19 funding to schools, providing guidance for when an outbreak happens, developing multiple plans that depend on what’s happening with the pandemic, providing for alternate and distance learning, and providing adequate PPE.
