Virtual schooling putting continued strain on parents

Disagreements linger about safety of returning to in-person learning

Ottawa physiotherapist Mary Bishai attends to her patients with her two young children closed into rooms at her clinic all day with their laptops, attending virtual school.

“It's torture,” she says, especially for four-year-old son Nicholas, who jumps on his chair like a jelly bean, loses focus by afternoon and is absorbing very little of his kindergarten lessons.

Bishai checks in when she can, bribing Nicholas with toys, treats, and promises of YouTube videos. She feels guilty that Nicholas and his eight-year-old sister, Chantal, remain inside those rooms all day, on screens for pandemic safety, allowed to leave only to go to the washroom. She feels guilty that she can't help them more with their virtual lessons, and she's exhausted as she tries to juggle everything.

With schools in Ottawa closed, Bishai says she has no choice but to take her children to work with her. She counts herself lucky that her company is compassionate and there are rooms available at the clinic.

Bishai says she's proud that her patients continue to receive the same high level of care.

She doesn't understand why daycares are allowed to open, but not schools, although both have pandemic safety protocols.

Nicholas wakes up every morning and asks if he's going to school, she says. “And I'm like `No, Nicholas, you're coming with me to the clinic.' And he says, `I don't want to do that! I want to go to school!'

“I'm like, `Well, the public schools are closed, I'm sorry, honey.' It's very hard.”

Bishai and her husband, who also works full-time and takes their one-year-old son to daycare every day, have no family nearby to help. “I have a sister in Alberta, but that's a very long distance to send your kids to be taken care of!” Bishai says with a laugh.

Neither of them can afford to quit their jobs, she says. “We have a mortgage, cars, the daycare.”

Bishai is among thousands of parents in Ottawa and across Ontario who are scrambling to care for their children during school closures.

Most of the province's students will continue to learn remotely at home on the advice of Ontario's chief medical officer of health, the province announced Wednesday.

Only schools in northern Ontario and seven largely rural areas in the south have been granted permission to resume in-person classes.

The province has given no indication of when schools in Ottawa and other areas will be allowed to reopen.

However, Ottawa's French Catholic school board said on its website that in-person classes wouldn't resume until at least Feb. 10.

Biostatistician Ryan Imgrund, who posts daily COVID-19 updates on Twitter, added a feature that predicts, by health unit, when schools could reopen.

His prediction for Ottawa, if the city stays on its current COVID -19 growth trajectory? Another 35 days.

The province has not explained how it decides which health units can reopen schools, but Imgrund notes that the seven areas allowed to resume in-person classes on Jan. 25 all have weekly COVID-19 case rates below 40 per 100,000 population.

The rate of 40 is a key indicator that would push a region into the “red zone” under Ontario's colour-coded guide to pandemic response. So Imgrund calculates how many days it would take before cases dip below 40.

Ottawa currently has a weekly case rate of 87 per 100,000.

There is widespread agreement that keeping kids out of schools is harmful forthem, but disagreement over whether it would be safe to send them back.

Ottawa's medical officer of health, Vera Etches, has supported a return to school.

A group of experts advising Ontario on school safety during the pandemic, under the guidance of the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto, weighed in Thursday. Their updated report said the best option was school attendance with enhanced infection-control measures and testing.

Thorough testing and contact tracing are needed to continually gain information about transmission of COVID -19 in schools and evaluate and adjust health and safety measures, the report said.

It recommended “more robust” physical distancing and non-medical mask use, especially by middle school and high school students in high-risk regions.

Schools should be the last doors to close and the first to open, said Sick Kids president Dr. Ronald Cohn, a co-author of the report.

“The current school closures need to be as time-limited as possible,” he said in a statement.

Further delays will exacerbate the harms to children and the inequities caused by school closures, the report said.

Several Ontario education unions have called on the government to halt in-person classes until safety at schools is improved, including reduced class sizes, better ventilation and widespread testing of asymptomatic students and staff.

“The Ford government likes to present the false choice of school buildings being either open or closed,” Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, said in a statement. “But what Catholic teachers and many other Ontarians have been calling for since March is a third option: a real plan that would prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools and allow students across the province to enjoy the benefits of in-person learning over the long run.”

Education Minister Stephen Lecce has said the government is working on enhanced safety protocols, including a program of targeted testing for asymptomatic staff and students.

The government has also extended the mandatory-mask policy to students in Grades 1 to 3.