Parents need province’s plan for school reopening soon

There are still three months until school resumes in September, and parents are no doubt already wondering: How will it work this year?

Their kids have been home since mid-March, studying online with help from mom and dad. When school does go back to the classroom, what will their lives look like?

The usual five days in a class with 20 or 25 other kids and a teacher or two almost certainly isn’t possible at this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Granted, three months is a long time when Ontario is still in the process of fighting the spread of COVID. A lot needs to change before things approach normal.

And while a lot will change over three months’ time, the provincial government owes it to parents to provide at least a partial picture soon of what the new school year will look like, and what their role will be in their kids’ education.

It’s time to start unmuddying the picture, just a bit. In an in-depth feature this week we spoke with experts about what the new school year could hold; a lot of questions remain.

Perhaps most important for parents, if elementary and secondary students do go back in split shifts — say two or three days at school, the rest spent studying at home to allow smaller class sizes — will there be sufficient daycare available?

Many parents in Niagara were either laid off or lost their jobs when the COVID-19 pandemic set in, but they expect to return to work. That will increase demand for daycare spaces in the community.

When Quebec’s elementary students returned to school last month, outside of hard-hit Montreal, within two weeks there were 41 new COVID-19 cases related to schools.

Presumably more time will have to be allotted for cleaners to disinfect classrooms and common areas. What impact will that have on the school day?

Even if kids are only back to school part-time and class sizes are smaller than before, what is the plan for kids to socially distance themselves in the schoolyard?

And is it enough in-class to simply separate the desks by a couple of metres? Will other measures be required?

What will be the impact on school busing? Is it simply a matter of maintaining basically the same number of routes, but with fewer kids in the bus and seating them apart from each other?

If changes will require more bus drivers, that could be an issue. Most companies barely have enough drivers as it is.

What will happen to school projects, school sports teams, that row of lockers every secondary school has — those things that traditionally bring kids physically close together. Do they have a place in the ‘new normal’?

If the reopening plan involves kids staying home for part of the week, parents need to know so they can prepare.

It’s early, and as Brock University Prof. Louis Volante pointed out in an article this week, Ontario has the advantage of learning from other areas that sent their kids back to school sooner.

On the other hand, because it is early a lot could change before September. And health professionals tell us a second wave is coming.

Soon, though, the province has to release at least a preliminary, partial plan to reopen the classrooms. Even if it has to include an asterisk noting these plans are subject to change.