Stakes very high with latest school reopening,

As of Monday, Zoom conference calls should be less noisy and home stress levels should be somewhat reduced as students in Hamilton head back to school, where they have not been since December.

There is now broad consensus from health experts — mental and physical — along with educators and parents, that this is for the best. This long break has been tough on kids and their families, and there is no doubt that their academic progress will have fallen off and getting it back will not be easy. It will make transitioning to post-secondary education tougher for senior high school students. It will leave gaps in the academic and social development of elementary school students.

None of this is to say that the schools shutdown wasn’t necessary. Again, following the health and science, it was. But especially as it has dragged on the damages caused to students and the wear and tear on families has become overwhelmingly pronounced.

Now, can schools be opened safely for students, teachers and staff? Education Minister Steven Lecce says the plan is safe and has the backing of public health experts. That’s interesting, because at least one says medical officers of health were not shown the plan. Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, says his colleagues communicated to the province their broad support for getting schools reopened, but only had a brief consultation the day before the plan was released, and didn’t actually see the details.

Hiriji told Torstar’s Grant LaFleche: “We were not presented with a plan for reopening and so we did not endorse any plan. However, (Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health) did survey all of our perspectives. As it was a 60-minute meeting, and there are 34 medical officers of health, this was not an in-depth discussion. In my brief comments, I did favour reopening schools to in-person learning, with some conditions and additional measures.”

Why would Lecce say the plan had public health endorsement when it did not? That is not an encouraging sign.

There are new provincewide measures in place for reopening, and that is cause for cautious optimism. Those include daily screening for symptoms, physical distancing, hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette and masking, including outdoors where physical distancing cannot be maintained.

In Hamilton, Catholic board students will be able to switch between in-person and remote learning, which offers that cohort more welcome flexibility.

An unwelcome grey area is the lack of detail around asymptomatic testing. At the urging of countless health experts, the province pledged to make both PCR and rapid testing available to schools and childcare centres. However, as Lecce noted, testing “will be deployed by local health units and staff.” The thinking is that such testing would help with early detection and possibly make tracing easier, which makes sense.

Hamilton’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Elizabeth Richardson said in a recent media briefing: “We’re talking with the school boards and others about whether that’s something that we would see could be useful here locally.” Fair enough, but that means parents and students won’t know when or if testing will be available at school at the time of reopening, and that seems like a missed opportunity.

The key here is student and staff safety, obviously. And the stakes are very high. Knowing the cost of the two shutdowns so far, the idea of a third is almost unthinkable. But that’s what could happen if we don’t regain some degree of control over the spread of the virus. Let’s do our part to keep kids in school.