‘People need time to turn their laptops off,’ province is told
Principals, students, staff plead with Ontario to keep spring break date
Stressed-out students are pleading with the provincial government to keep spring break as scheduled next month, saying they need time off to reset after what has already been a challenging school year.
And the head of the Catholic Principals’ Council of Ontario said staff and administrators are exhausted, given all the extra demands of COVID.
“People need time to turn their laptops off, turn their phones off, and get five days of respite before we get rolling and go back,” said council president Blaine MacDougall.
Kirsten Kelly of the Ontario Student Trustees’ Association, which advocates on behalf of the province’s two million public school students, said they “really do need a mental break — it’s kind of like a marathon, and we just keep sprinting throughout this.”
Switching from in-person to online learning and “the different circumstances students are facing now … we really need that break. So delaying it, (the association) wouldn’t agree with that,” said Kelly, who is in Grade 12 at Assumption Catholic Secondary School in Burlington.
Teachers, too, have said they’d like to keep the week of April 12 off, after the province delayed the traditional mid-March break in the hopes of curtailing travel and get-togethers that could boost COVID-19 cases, as happened after the December holidays.
But as COVID numbers continued to grow this month, and with the more infectious variants taking hold, Premier Doug Ford said Monday that families will know by the end of this week if spring break will be delayed, yet again.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce has said the plan is for the holiday to go ahead, as planned, unless Ontario’s medical officer of health advises otherwise.
On Tuesday, the Toronto District School Board announced four more school closings, at Thorncliffe Park and Gateway elementary schools, Clinton Street Junior Public School, and Ryerson Community School. Also Tuesday, all classes at St. Jude Catholic School and St. Rose of Lima Catholic School were dismissed.
As of Tuesday morning at 10:30 a.m., some 58 schools in the province were closed, which is one per cent of all schools, and 1,168 were reporting at least one COVID-19 case, representing 24 per cent.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Tuesday in the legislature that parents are getting mixed messages from the premier and education minister, asking “why can’t the government ever provide certainty and answers for parents and kids and teachers when it comes to what’s happening to their education system?”
Lecce said: “We now deal with variants of concern; we have to respond to this risk. I think parents expect us to make the tough decisions, when appropriate. But when it comes to April break, we plan to proceed. We’ll continue to follow the best advice of the chief medical officer of health, and if anything changes, given the day-to-day change and fluctuation in these numbers of the province of Ontario, we’ll make sure all families know that well in advance.”
Ann Pace, president of the Ontario Principals’ Council, said her members’ concerns about health and well-being are the same as they were when the original March break was changed.
Another delay “would create such incredible upheaval for folks when you consider that parents have had to book time off work … or they’ve made arrangements for their children to be cared for.”
Dr. Anna Banerji, who was of two minds on moving spring break to April, said it should go ahead as planned.
“Some stability is required,” said the professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
But, she said, “my feeling is that from the very beginning, there has been a lack of communication.
“There really needs to be more consultation with the premier’s office and the teachers and school boards.”