District aims to minimize number of kids in school

Essential-service workers told to find other care for children if they can

Health-care workers, police officers and firefighters in the Kelowna area must try to find other care alternatives for their children before sending them back to school.

Central Okanagan Public Schools has provided some clarification on which families can send their kids to school on Monday.

“Essential-service workers that can make other arrangements for care with older siblings, partners or other relatives must do so to support the practice of social distancing,” the school district states.

In-school care will be provided for kindergarten to Grade 6 children of qualifying essential-service workers from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The deadline for parents to apply for their kids to attend school was midnight Wednesday.

Doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers and emergency responders, such as police officers and firefighters, are deemed to be Tier 1 essential-service workers. These are the people whose children are eligible to return to school on Monday.

As of Tuesday, about 550 such families had expressed an interest in having their kids in school next week, school superintendent Kevin Kaardal said.

Tier 2 essential-service workers include grocery store employees, truckers, warehouse workers and utility workers. Tier 3 essentialservice workers include teachers themselves.

Those Tier 2 and Tier 3 essentialservice workers who want to have their children return to school will be put on a waiting list.

The district statement offered no indication when those wait-list applications might be processed. Kaardal did not respond to an email asking for more details on the plan to bring some students back to school.