Open schools after Labour Day, teachers’ unions urge

Brushing away assurances from the provincial government that the back-to-school plan announced in June will be tweaked next week, Quebec teachers’ unions are sticking to their demand that the first day of classes be postponed until after Labour Day.

Teachers need more time to prepare everything from safety measures in the classrooms and hallways, to emergency protocols for COVID-19 outbreaks, and to get more training in online teaching in the event of a second wave, say the presidents of two organizations that together represent 73,000 teachers across the province.

“I just heard both Dr. Arruda and Minister Dubé say in their press conference they would be reviewing the mask issue and the back-to-school plan, but the clock is ticking,” said Josée Scalabrini, president of the FSE-CSQ, an umbrella group of 34 unions representing 65,000 teachers at school boards across Quebec. “The first day of school is around the corner.”

She noted that teachers had more questions than answers when the back-to-school plan was released in June, and now that masks are mandatory in public spaces, they have many more.

The plan is still to group students into “bubbles” of five or six, with members of that bubble allowed to sit and work close together in the classroom. Each bubble must maintain a distance of at least a metre from other bubbles. Teachers will have to stay two metres from students, with the exception of the very young and those with special needs. Teachers will move from classroom to classroom while students will stay put in one classroom all day.

Scalabrini said teachers remain baffled as to how they are expected to ensure these “bubbles” will be maintained in the hallways and schoolyards.

And now that masks are obligatory in all public places, many teachers are wondering if and why classrooms should be treated differently.

“We need to clarify all these issues, and we can’t wait for mid-september to know the emergency plans,” Scalabrini said. “We know there will be a second wave worldwide and we can’t go through the chaos we did last spring again.”

At his COVID-19 update news conference Monday, Quebec public health director Horacio Arruda said the question of whether teachers and students will have to wear masks in the classroom “will be re-evaluated,” but he sounded unlikely to bring down a blanket mask rule in schools.

“One has to understand that the controlled context in a classroom is different than the context of a supermarket, etc.,” he said. “A teacher can manage certain elements of distancing.”

Health Minister Christian Dubé confirmed that the government will update the back-to-school plan next week.

Heidi Yetman, president of the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers, pointed to a survey showing only about 40 per cent of teachers in her association had received training in online teaching, and 60 per cent of those found the training to be inadequate.

“Those who received training say they learned the platform, but not how to create the courses, how to evaluate students’ work online, etc.,” said Yetman, whose union represents 8,000 teachers who work for the anglophone school boards of Quebec.

“All that training still needs to be done, and most teachers want training and to be prepared for a second closure,” Yetman said.

“We’ve asked the minister to start classes after Labour Day to give teachers a week to get it all organized, set up emergency protocols, get training on how to wear masks and how to educate the kids on (COVID-19 safely). It’s unbelievable how much training people need.”

The whole issue of mental health also needs attention, Yetman said.

Many children who were isolated at home all summer will come back to school traumatized, she said, and teachers need some training to deal with that.

Yetman said she met with Education Minister Jean-françois Roberge in late May and discussed the idea of starting school for students after Labour Day, with five new pedagogical days before the first day of classes. She said the minister suggested moving pedagogical days from other parts of the school year, since kids are supposed to have 180 days of school.

“I said, ‘Yeah, well, this year they could have 175,” Yetman said. COVID-19 is an unprecedented crisis, she said, so if high school students end up working from home on certain days to reduce class sizes, or if the school year has to be shortened to let teachers prepare properly, so be it.

“It’s not forever,” Yetman said. “It is a crisis. We need to adapt.”