Ford needs a real plan to reopen schools

Doug Ford’s supposedly grand plan for reopening Ontario’s schools in September isn’t really a plan at all.

It’s more like a jumble of vague intentions that the premier jotted down on a paper napkin, then handed to Education Minister Stephen Lecce to tweet to bewildered parents and educators.

Every fair-minded Ontarian knows it won’t be easy to safely usher 2 million students back into classrooms that have been shut since March because of COVID-19. But the strategy Ford announced last week is to take this humongous problem and dump it in the laps of the province’s 72 school boards. That simply isn’t good enough.

Ford’s government offered the school boards three back-to-school scenarios: They can opt for a full return to in-school learning; they can offer online instruction to students at home; or they can choose a hybrid model that combines in-school with remote education.

Lecce favours the hybrid option which would set a limit of 15 students for each classroom and timetabling to make sure they’re in contact only with classmates and one teacher. Their in-school classes would be held either on alternate days or weeks.

Pity the poor school boards now stuck with the task of not only selecting the best scenario for their community, but coming up with a comprehensive plan to make it all happen. With the first day of classes just 12 weeks away, they have little time to do this properly. To add to their frustration, Ford won’t give the boards more detailed directions — and more specific help — until early August.

This is no time for the provincial government to shirk its responsibility — both for public education and public health. The goal should be to return to regular school days and weeks as soon as it’s safely manageable.

Health-care experts agree that indefinitely keeping kids at home and out of school is bad for their intellectual development as well as their mental and physical health. Full-day, online instruction is no substitute for live, classroom education, especially when elementary students are involved.

Offering alternate days or weeks of instruction might be a reasonable way to ease back into classroom instruction — but only in the very short term. Such an approach would leave yawning gaps in student learning — even with a virtual component. This option would also be a nightmare for working parents whether or not they can do their jobs from home. Yes, student education must remain the top priority. Reopening the economy has to matter, too.

There is, in fact, a convincing argument that because the rate of COVID-19 infection varies from region to region in Ontario, a one-size-fits-all approach to reopening the province’s classrooms wouldn’t work. But Ford shouldn’t have dropped the school boards into the driver’s seat for this project without directions and enough fuel in their tank.

The Ontario Ministry of Health — not the school boards — has the staff, know-how and financial resources to protect students and teachers in this pandemic. Ford should assign the ministry the task of setting standards and implementing practices that will ensure proper distancing on buses and effective hygiene in the schools themselves. The premier needs to make sure the boards have more custodians and more supplies to keep their schools clean. It should be the province, not the school boards, that tracks and contains new outbreaks of COVID-19.

A more proactive government would have already resolved these challenges. We can only hope that with the schools scheduled to restart Sept. 8, Premier Ford works best under deadline pressure.