The looming decision from the Ontario government on whether kids will return to classes next week or move to virtual learning at home is leaving parents, teachers, and students frustrated.
Orillia's Nathan Rehm is an educational assistant at Notre Dame Catholic School and a parent to three children. He has an 11-year-old at Monsignor Lee Catholic School, a 16-year-old at Patrick Fogarty Catholic Secondary School, and an 18-year-old in college.
“We are at about a 10 on the scale of frustration. We have to have a plan in place, and it takes time to make those plans. When things are happening at the last minute, it leaves people scrambling,” he said.
Both Rehm and his wife work full-time. While his children are essentially self-sufficient, he is more worried about the additional screen time that comes with online learning.
“They are getting the curriculum online, but the more frustrating part is the lack of all the extracurriculars they will be missing out on,” he said.
Rehm’s children are hopeful they won’t be sent back to school next week.
“They don’t want to be sent back with masks, no sports, and no fun. It’s all very clinical and rigid. I think they would be more excited about going back to school if they were going back to some normalcy,” he said.
Rehm is hopeful that schools re-open next week, and he says keeping schools closed would be a big mistake. However, if they do re-open, stricter protocols will need to be enforced.
“As someone who works in a school, I do see a lot of kids come in with home-made masks, single-layer cloth masks that hang below their faces, and I would like to see some more standardization for as long as we need the masks,” he said.
Dave Mcleod is another frustrated local parent who is waiting on the provincial government to make an announcement regarding the plan for next week’s schooling. Mcleod has two seven-year-old children at Orchard Park Public School.
“It’s frustrating because I believe a decision was already made regarding the back-to-school plan and the writing was on the wall when they sent testing kits home with students,” he said.
“We have been under the impression, since the beginning of the break, that the transition to online learning would take place for the first two to four weeks; hopefully we are wrong.”
Mcleod says he and his family will be OK planning for next week on short notice, but that may not be the case for many Ontario families.
“My lovely fiancée and I work opposite shifts and have a tremendous amount of family support, if we are ever in need of their help, so the strain on our family isn’t as prevalent as most,” he explained.
“I know that is not a luxury the majority of families have at their disposal and trying to schedule time off work, arrange qualified pre- or post-school care on two days’ notice is next to impossible and stressful," Mcleod lamented.
"I don’t think the government considers the stress it places on parents by delaying their news conferences and leaving people in limbo.”
Mcleod says the biggest victims of the pandemic are children.
"To state that at-home/virtual learning is difficult would be an understatement; a nightmare is a more fitting description for the younger grades. Homes are not set up as a natural school learning environment and they offer too many distractions," he said.
"Children also need to interact with their peers in person and develop normal relationships, not relationships garnered through screen time. I have a great deal of respect for the teachers who are required to navigate and teach through this uncertainty, as their patience and professionalism in dealing with the obvious obstacles is admirable."
Despite the rapid rise in COVID-19 cases, Mcleod is hopeful that schools reopen next week.
"I believe the children benefit from being in a school setting and the risk of their development on a daily basis outweighs the threat of them having the flu for a couple of days. As much as I miss our daily adventures, our girls need the structure of in-person schooling," he said.
