Teachers, school boards sound alarm over Ontario’s back to school plan

School boards, teachers unions and parents are all expressing concerns with the province’s back to school plan, saying they weren’t fully consulted and are left feeling uneasy about Monday’s return to classrooms.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce held a news conference Wednesday afternoon and said Ontario’s return to in-person learning plan will focus on rapid testing, improved ventilation and more access to vaccinations and personal protective equipment (PPE).

The Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board sent an open letter to Lecce outlining specific concerns they still have now that the full plan has been made available.

The board says the issues being relayed in the letter are what the trustees are regularly hearing from parents and guardians “who are angry, frustrated, and more apprehensive than ever to send their children to school.”

On January 12, the DPCDSB Board of Trustees sent a letter to Education Minister Stephen Lecce outlining concerns with respect to aspects of the return to in-person learning on January 17.

Read the letter here: https://t.co/O0M0qP4pQY pic.twitter.com/uADc1y7yoY

— Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board (@DPCDSBSchools) January 13, 2022

The letter cites a lack of transparency from the Ford government and says there was no consultation with school boards on the changes to protocols for testing and reporting outbreaks.

The board is also calling for students to get medical-grade masks, say there is an inadequate supply of rapid test kits and claim that not every classroom has a HEPA filter to ensure adequate ventilation.

“I’m grateful to the school boards for being vocal,” says NDP opposition leader Andrea Horwath. “The government likes to throw out big numbers like 3,000 HEPA filters. We find out those HEPA filters are not in every classroom.”

Union officials say the new guidance and measures from the Ford government have many of their teachers feeling uneasy about the return to physical classes.

“One thing that people need to realize is that teachers and education workers are in a classroom for 150 minutes at a time,” says Michelle Teixeira, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF).

“And that’s the difference, we can’t see in any other sector where that’s the case. Where there’s a worker who’s in a room with 30 other people for a long period of time with potentially inadequate ventilation.”

The Ministry of Education says they have deployed an additional 3,000 standalone HEPA filter units to schools boards on top of the existing 70,000 units that were already in schools.

But the OSSTF said they were hoping for more concrete guidelines from the province with many questions about ventilation and masks left unanswered.

“We also need to know if there is a sufficient supply of the N95 masks,” said Teixeira. “What we’re hearing right now is that there is about two to three per staff member available. We need to know if that supply is going to continue.”

Lecce said the province has shipped 9.1 million N95 masks for staff and over four million masks for students. He says they “will regularly send new shipments over the coming weeks and months.”

As part of its plan, the Ministry of Education says schools will now only be required to report COVID-19 outbreaks to Public Health Units when absenteeism rates among students and staff hit 30 per cent.

Some concerned parents say they want their kids back in school but don’t believe the new measures put in place will be enough to keep teachers and students safe with the community transmission of Omicron still so high across the province.

“It’s not safe for kids right now,” says Jessica Lyons, an Ontario mother of three.

Lyons is calling Lecce’s Wednesday press conference “political theatre” and tells CityNews she felt disappointed after hearing the province’s plans.

“I believe that we still are in a moment where it is too risky to open schools to in-person learning,” says Lyons. “And I say that with children who would much rather be in-class learning.”

Lyons says parents like her were left in the dark after the government announced they would not be notifying of positive cases in classes.

The province says the information on outbreaks before the 30 per cent threshold will still be made available to the public through the Ministry’s website.

On Tuesday, the province released updated guidance, saying that students will only be eligible for PCR testing if they develop COVID-19 symptoms while they are at school. Cohorts will no longer be dismissed in the event of a positive case and schools will no longer routinely notify students in classes with a positive case.

With files from CityNews reporters Richard Southern and Melissa Nakhavoly