Will our schools be closing? Ontario school boards decides on school closure

BY PAUL JUNOR

It will be up to the school boards in Ontario to make the critical decisions regarding the type of learning that students will have. In addition, they will decide whether schools operate full-time, part-time or shut down. Minister of Education, Stephen Leece revealed that this decision would be based on the recommendations of medical officers of health.

Ontario’s Back to School Reopening Plan, which was released in August, has been heavily criticized by: education unions, and parents groups. Experts gave boards three options. Students can attend school either full-time with regular class sizes, a hybrid model of in-person and online learning or full-time remote learning at home in a virtual school environment.

The Ministry of Education informed the community that school boards have the final say after analyzing the COVID-19 situations in their local community. The Ontario government released a color-coded framework that placed restrictions on businesses and other ventures, but does not include schools.

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer stated at a press conference “The schools are in a different area. We have opened those up with a lot of protection in place” He referred to the fact that it included “More staff, public health nurses, personal protective equipment for staff and mandatory masks for older students, and placing students into cohorts to reduce mixing with others.”

According to the province’s daily COVID-19 dashboard, there have been over three thousands cases of COVID-19 in schools across the province. There has been a steady increase in hot zones such as Mississauga, Brampton, Toronto and Ottawa. At present, there are less than 12% of Ontario schools that have indicated positive results among students and staff. Dr. William observes that students who test positive for COVID-19 acquire it from either home or community. In addition, he reiterates that as long as community transmission is minimal, then students have a low risk of being exposed to the virus. He knows that kids can transmit the virus

Raywat Deenandan, who teaches epidemiology at the University of Toronto acknowledges that schools can act as accelerators in spreading the virus. He notes that an effective contact tracing system is not in place and it leaves many unanswered questions. He observes, “From a population perspective we want to make sure schools are not bioreactors and incubators that are keeping this thing firing along. We need to be able to trace the cases to determine: did they originate from school contact or not? Having the inability to so that tells us that we don’t know. We just don’t know.”

The main factor that will determine school closure will be the number of new COVID-19 cases a day and the percentage of tests that are positive according to Dr. Deonandan. A key clue is the positivity rate. “It’s time to give serious thought to closing. At the moment, it is 4% in Ontario.”