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I am just indescribably upset with @Sflecce and @fordnation for the disaster of elementary school reopenings in Ontario. They have had months to come up with a plan and, instead, are forcing parents to make impossible choices with little or no concrete information.
And beyond the question of class sizes and ventilation—issues that should have been prioritized months ago—parents are left without other basic answers to key questions that will be essential for our decision making.
For instance: what resources are you going to offer for parents given every time our child gets a cold—which happens 1 to 2 times per month in the winter—when kids are forced to quarantine while they wait for COVID test results?
What are your plans for continuity of teaching when classes, floors or entire schools get shut down for weeks at a time when some students test positive?
How are parents going to be protected from the huge increase in sick days they'll be forced to take when their kids are awaiting tests, when schools are closed, or when entire families are put into quarantine during a localized outbreak?
What are your plans for continuity of teaching when teachers get ill and are forced to stay home or are put into quarantine? How will it work with maintaining cohorts when substitute teachers are needed?
Obviously these are questions that are the responsibility of the @tdsb and other school boards, but the total absence of leadership at the provincial level has meant that we don't even have a reopening plan, let alone a plan for what the actual school year is going to look like
And what is going to be the criteria for shutting down schools during a second wave? Will the school boards have the authority to do this? What kind of conditions will necessitate a shutdown? Just as important: What are your contingency plans for when/if another shutdown happens?
