Elementary teachers’ president criticizes Ontario’s decision to have students in class during lockdown

Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) president Sam Hammond says while he maintains that in-person learning is the best option for students, he and his representatives are struggling to grasp the logic of why it’s necessary with COVID-19 cases on the rise.

“It is concerning with 3,000 or more COVID-19 cases a day in this province when it is spreading through long-term care homes, in the middle of a lockdown, that the minister and the government would be putting the students and educators back in the schools and classrooms of 25 to 30 students,” Hammond told 680 NEWS.

Elementary students are tentatively slated to return to their classrooms on January 11.

Meanwhile, some students across Ontario returned to the virtual classroom Monday as part of a province-wide lockdown.

The measure ends for all students in northern Ontario and elementary students in southern Ontario after the first week back from winter break.

High schoolers in southern Ontario will continue online learning until Jan. 25.

Asked whether the province would consider extending remote learning, a spokeswoman for Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government will continue to follow the advice of medical experts in making those decisions.

In a letter issued on Sunday, Lecce affirmed that schools are not a significant source of COVID-19 transmission.

“We believe so strongly that schools are essential to the well-being, mental health, and development of a child, and therefore, must be safeguarded at all costs to ensure they can remain open for safe in-class instruction,” Lecce said.

“I want to reassure parents that according to the province’s leading doctors, our schools are safe, with eight out of 10 schools in this province having no cases of COVID-19 and based on board reporting, 99.64 percent of students have not reported a case of COVID-19.”

On Monday, Toronto’s top doctor said while health officials ought to be “constantly assessing and re-assessing” circumstances of the virus, she believes transmission across schools remains low.

“With schools, we have this very interesting balance that needs to be struck, and we have to observe that,” Dr. Eileen de Villa said during Toronto’s COVID-19 update.

“What the experience has been, by and large, is that there is not a great deal of transmission that happens in school. What we are seeing is that as levels of COVID-19 activity in the community are increased, it is also reflected in our school system.”

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Jessica Lyons of the Ontario Parent Action Network said the numbers are more alarming than last month, when the province initially announced the temporary switch to remote classes as part of the lockdown that took effect on Boxing Day.

“Now we’re so much worse — indescribably worse. And the plan is to go back, and it’s just like how there’s no rationale there,” Lyons, who has two school-aged children and a toddler, said Monday.

“We haven’t even closed all of the things that we could close yet (to reduce the risk of community spread), and we’re not trending in the right direction yet … we’re still cresting.”

Lyons said many parents, including herself, are “quite terrified” at the prospect of another complete shutdown of in-person learning like what was imposed during the first wave of the pandemic.

But she said the province’s actions, particularly as case counts skyrocketed over the last month, have done nothing to assure parents that sending kids back to school in person would be safe.

Hammond said if Lecce and the Ford government insists on having students return to class, more needs to be done to ensure they’re safe.

“What we are seeing is where, whatever school has implemented asymptomatic testing, that school has been shut down and there have been numerous cases within a school,” ETFOs president added.

“… It is extremely concerning. The government continues to downplay the transmission of COVID-19 in schools but has absolutely no data to back that up.”

In early December, the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation (OSSTF) sent an open letter to the government and Toronto Public Health “calling for extended asymptomatic COVID-19 testing and for schools to remain closed for the first two weeks of January.”

At the time, teachers and education workers urged the government and health officials in the city to move all schools to online learning beginning Monday, for at least the first two weeks after New Years’ Day.

With files from The Canadian Press