Confusing extra ped days before Christmas
On Thursday morning in Cowansville there was a protest march against the proposed extension of the Christmas holidays and then again an addition of days at the end of the school year. The daycare workers from the Val des Cerfs Service Centre walked along to 170 Sherbrooke Street to the office of Isabelle Charest, the CAQ member for Brome-missisquoi. She is the Minister for the Status of Women.
Rumours were flying around at the beginning of the week and it didn’t seem that there was much in the way of communication between the government and the school boards. Daycare staff are stretched as it is. There are few, if any, names on a substitute list for daycare workers. If large numbers of students were to be allowed into daycare, there seemed to be no plan as to how to be able to staff an enlarged daycare population.
As of Friday, things became somewhat clearer when Premier Legault gave his press conference. There will be some extra Professional Days before Christmas and the elementary schools will return on January
7, as was originally on the school calendar. The high school students will stay home for one additional week.
The daycares in Val des Cerfs will only be for students of parents who work in essential services for the extra December professional days of December 17, 18, 21st, and 22. What is a problem is that the students who have signed up for daycare for the whole school year, will not be eligible for the “extra” professional days unless their parents fall into the essential services category. With not much advance warning, parents will be scrambling to find a way to cover their children’s extra time at home. At this point it does not seem that the school year is being extended.
In the English system, each school’s Governing Board is voting on whether or not the daycare in its building will operate on those extra Ped Days. At Heroes’ and Knowlton Academy the daycares will be closed on Monday, November 23, and Monday, December 7. The Christmas vacation will begin on December 17 in the English schools.
Val des Cerfs’ schools will open on Wednesday, January 6, with their regular day cares in operation. In the Eastern Township School Board the day cares will not be open on the 6. Both school boards start their regular elementary return on Thursday, the 7, with the high schools having an extra week at home.
The reasoning behind the extra Ped Days is so that staff can receive proper training should remote learning have to be more in place in the coming months. It is a week by week, wait and see, situation it seems. Even though this is what is being said now, everything can change week by week.