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OCDSB trustees prefer five-day-a-week return to school in September

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Ottawa English public school board trustees present at a virtual meeting Friday morning voted unanimously to adopt a motion saying the board wants to offer five-day-a-week education for students when school starts in September.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) motion said that the board “prefers all students return to full-time instruction, including Extended Day Program, five days a week, with enhanced cleaning and hygiene in September 2020.”

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Schools were ordered closed in mid-March amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ontario government has mandated school boards to ready for three possible scenarios for the fall. They include a full opening of schools with enhanced safety measures in place, a full schedule of online classes only or a hybrid plan, where students might attend in-person classes two days a week and receive online instruction for the rest.

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But during during a five-hour virtual meeting Thursday evening, an overwhelming majority of the parents who spoke wanted full-time, in-school classes.

They cited failures of virtual learning at home, financial hardship to parents and the impact of isolation on the well-being of their children as COVID-19 cases fall in Ottawa.

The board heard “loud and clear” from parents that full-time school is needed, Chair Lynn Scott said during discussion Friday morning.

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While there’s still much in the hands of health officials and the province’s education ministry, the motion makes the board position clear, Scott said. She will write a letter expressing their view to Minister of Education Stephen Lecce and Premier Doug Ford.

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“It has been very difficult for trustees to hear from so many parents who have been really challenged to meet the needs for our children and so many of our staff who have been equally challenged in trying to serve our children,” Scott said.

Scott’s letter will say that the board thinks back to school plans, especially the hybrid model,  leave working parents of young children, single parents, and low-income families in “the precarious position of having to choose between educating their children and their own employment.” A recovery plan needs to get as many students as possible back in “physical schools and spaces” while respecting public health advice.

She’ll also ask the ministry of education for funding for school districts to cover COVID-19 costs such as personal protective equipment, extra staffing, transportation, technology, mental-health supports, cleaning supplies and school retrofits and maintenance.

Trustee Sandra Schwartz said that may parents – herself included – have found the past months “extraordinarily difficult.”

The motion “sends a very strong signal” to both the community and the provincial government, she said.

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Board staff are directed to create “high-level plans” for back-to-school in September.

They’re to orient all their work around children’s human right to education under the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Canada’s commitment under to the U.N.’s sustainable development goal of quality education.

And they’re asked to “work creatively” – including by investigating how other jurisdictions in Canada and elsewhere have returned kids to class safely –  in concert with Ottawa Public Health (OPH) on a “broadly costed, workable, full-time September return plan for both school and EDP that is explicitly endorsed by OPH” as addressing the level of risk in the city.

The plan will be presented to the Ontario Ministry of Education next month.

Meanwhile in an update Thursday, the Ottawa Catholic School Board also said its “preference … is for all students to return to regular instruction, five days a week, with enhanced cleaning and hygiene.”

But the Catholic board noted that the decision will be made by the ministry of education in consultation with the ministry of health.

“The minister of education will make that decision in early August,” the Catholic board said. “The good news is that the data in the province and the Ottawa area are trending in the right direction.”

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