B.C. schools open in ‘trial run’ for fall
Attendance optional, students return part time before new school year Lauren Shaw and daughter Sehera were excited to return to school in North Vancouver Monday.
VANCOUVER— For Kayla Murtaza, it was straight for the playground.
The elementary student in North Vancouver was so excited to be back at school Monday that she and her mom showed up half an hour early — just in time to have the swings and play set to herself for a couple of minutes.
“Yeah, I’m excited,” she said from atop the play set, where she had a clear view of her classmates arriving.
It was an odd sort of back-toschool day in British Columbia, one that comes just as the last month of the school year begins — and with strict new guidelines on distancing, cleaning and schedules that could become a part of school life next fall, or until a vaccine is found for the coronavirus.
Officials in B.C. have called the optional return to class a “trial run” for the fall.
While classes in most of Quebec returned last month, B.C. is the first Canadian province to open all of its schools, although attendance is optional, and most of the kids who do attend will only do so part time.
And despite the presence of certain back-to-school hallmarks — crossing guards in place, kids grasping their parents’ hands before nervously joining peers they haven’t seen in months, teachers sipping coffee out of tumblers in the staff parking lot — B.C. kids arrived at school Monday under unprecedented circumstances.
Some teachers and students wore face masks as they got organized for the day, and commented on each other’s chosen mask designs.
And the chatter on the playground was different: “Where is everybody?” “Are they coming?” And somehow, the same: “Is it summer yet?”
The key feature of B.C.’s June back-to-school plan, aside from the swath of classroom and logistical adjustments that will need to be made at school levels to guarantee physical distancing and twice-daily cleaning — is that students will return on a part-time basis, dramatically reducing the number of students in class at any particular time.
For kids from kindergarten to Grade 5, that means going to school about 50 per cent of the time, while students in grades 6 and above will only attend class in-person once a week — although it is up to each individual school to plan the details of when students will be in class or learning online. Changes will also be made to how school buses operate, with one student per seat, and Plexiglas barriers put up to protect drivers.
In the case of Queen Mary Elementary in North Vancouver, teachers for kindergarten to Grade 5 will be in classrooms every weekday except Wednesday, when they’ll continue with online learning for students whose parents choose to keep them at home.
For the students who do attend, half will go to school the first two days of the week, and half will attend the last two.
Kayla’s mom, Farah Kaboodani, said that brings the number of kids in her daughter’s class down to eight at a time, from the normal 20.
“At the beginning, I didn’t want her to go back,” Kaboodani said. “But I just kept checking the status, the number of coronavirus cases, and I feel confident that it’s OK.”
Monday morning, teachers at Queen Mary spread out across the school’s large lawn and spaced out pylons in large circles — one for each of the students attending class that day. When everyone had arrived, the classes took turns going into the school, with teachers reminding students to keep two metres apart.
Lauren Shaw, whose daughter, Sehera, also returned to school Monday, said she’s glad schools are reopened in B.C., even if it’s just for the end of the school year.
“I think they jumped the gun on shutting schools to begin with,” she said, describing how the major change in kids’ routines added layers of anxiety for parents and kids alike.
“We all just need to take care of ourselves.”
But she’s not brushing off the risk of the coronavirus. Shaw said she’s told Sehera it’s important to remain cautious, because COVID-19 is still out there.