Ontario can’t explain keeping schools closed
Dodgy reasoning is hurting kids and families
can someone in the doug Ford government please provide a clear, concise explanation of why most Ontario schools remain closed and what it would take to reopen them?
It hardly seems necessary to say, but this is kind of a big deal for parents, students and people who work in education. Hundreds of thousands of Ontario parents have been forced to balance the demands of work and at-home learning. Students are losing big chunks of yet another school year, while teachers are struggling with an online learning plan that is ill-suited to young children.
It’s really an unsustainable mess, and people are desperate to know when it will end. Or if not when, then at least what numbers it would take to get schools reopened. right now, that’s a mystery.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced Thursday that 280,000 students in four public health units can return to school Feb. 1. Combined with earlier openings, that means about one-quarter of Ontario’s two million students can now attend a real school.
Why them and not others? The closest thing the minister offered to an explanation in his written statement was a reference to a “growing consensus in the medical community that returning students to in-person learning is essential to the well-being, development and mental health of children.”
OK, but that “growing consensus” has been broadly accepted since last fall. That’s one of the reasons why the schools were reopened in September, before most were closed again in January. One would reasonably deduce that COVID numbers are lower in the areas where schools are now being allowed to reopen, but what are the trigger numbers for that to happen? No one will say.
At a briefing later Thursday, Ontario chief medical officer of health dr. david Williams was asked what has to happen before the rest of the province’s schools open. He gave a long, convoluted answer but failed to identify any condition or set of conditions that would lead to reopening. It was a particularly interesting response because, earlier in the same briefing, the head of the province’s science panel said school openings would have little effect on the pandemic’s progress, as long as overall case numbers continue to go down.
Williams spoke at length about all the safety procedures and processes that have to be in place before schools can reopen. If that’s the case, what’s happening in the schools that are already open?
The Ontario government routinely assures us that everything it does is based on science. If so, science in Ontario must be unique, because every other province has opened schools, even provinces with higher per-capita case rates.
There is certainly no lack of scientists calling for school reopening. Toronto Sickkids Hospital’s latest report calls for schools to reopen with somewhat enhanced safety measures, saying “schools should be the last doors to close and the first to open in society.” On Tuesday, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, dr. Vera Etches, called on the province to reopen that city’s schools. She said the same thing last week.
“There are many different kinds of harms that we see with schools being closed, which lead us to wanting to open them as soon as we can,” Etches said. The province has finally agreed with her: Ottawa schools are set to open next week.
reopening schools has well-known benefits, but they are being trumped by fear of children getting sick. recent experience would suggest otherwise. The anticipated tsunami of infections didn’t happen when the province’s schools reopened in September. Since that time, only one per cent of schools have closed because of outbreaks.
The real problem came during Christmas holidays, when children interacted freely without the supervision that schools offer. At that time, the number of cases among those four to 11 years of age went up 117 per cent.
reopening schools does pose an unusual dilemma for the provincial government. Schools were closed after the Christmas break without the province explaining exactly what the sector-specific problem was. It’s difficult to argue that the threat level is acceptable now when no one has clearly explained what was unacceptable in the first place.
The fundamental problem is that Ontario’s COVID -19 policy has become untethered from most facts and numbers. That started when the government shelved its colour-coded restrictions plan, which relied on discernible, factual triggers for action. They were over-ridden when the Ford government ordered a provincewide lockdown dec. 26 and followed that with a stay-athome order Jan. 14.
When the colour-coded restrictions plan was put in place, schools were excluded because the provincial government was determined to keep them open, no matter what. Now, they will reopen when david Williams decides they should, based on criteria he can’t explain. That’s just not good enough.