September 4, 2020

Back to school in the middle of a pandemic

“I believe this is the right first step,” said Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, on August 27, 2020. Dr. Hinshaw was responding to a question asked at a recent news conference about what she thought of Alberta’s return to school plan, and whether school closures can be avoided if there are outbreaks of COVID-19.

There is no doubt that the safe return to school for hundreds of thousands of K-12 students in Alberta over the next couple of weeks is weighing heavily on the minds of many parents and their children. To help ease the concerns and inform parents many school jurisdictions have publicly released back-to-school plans. We trust that this has been much appreciated by our communities.

Parental responses run the gamut. Many have sent their children back to school hoping everything will be okay. Some parents are confident in their school board’s re-entry plan and believe the benefits of socialization and shared learning outweigh the risk of contracting COVID-19. Some parents are concerned about guaranteeing smaller class sizes to the extent that they are paying tens of thousands of dollars per child for the coming year, to enroll their child in a private school. Yet other parents are looking at home schooling / online options for their children.

At the outset, we welcomed back students, teachers, and staff to our schools. We have missed everyone, and there’s no substitute for in-person learning and growing together. We are also members of our communities, and many of us have children – or grandchildren – in the public school system. We have also heard the concerns, including physical distancing and capping of class sizes to ensure adequate distance between students, personal protective equipment like masks and face shields, and the necessary cleaning staff to ensure common spaces are as clean as possible.

Debating the merits of returning to in-person classes is a tough subject. There are no right or wrong answers after we all agree that our paramount concern is addressing the health and safety of our students, staff and communities.

In addition to the $10 million distributed to boards across the province by the Alberta government to assist in COVID-related expenses, we also welcomed the recent federal government release of nearly $2 billion dollars to help provinces and territories with school re-entry. In making the announcement, the federal government indicated that Alberta’s share of this funding is slightly more than $262 million and will be distributed according to the number of children aged four to 18 years old. We called upon the provincial government to distribute the funding on a per student basis to each of the 61 school jurisdictions across the province. There has been some concern that the funding has also been provided to private and charter schools.

The good news is that we are all in this together. Solutions may look different depending on where in the province you live, which is why so many school board re-entry plans look different.

So, as the only provincial association advocating solely on behalf of public schools in Alberta, we will continue to work with the Alberta government to make our concerns known.

One last and very important note: parents in public school jurisdictions across Alberta need to know they must register their child(ren) for the coming school year in their local division, even if they plan to home school or make alternative arrangements. This is because the new funding formula is based on a three-year timeline. Failure to register them this year could impact funding for the following two years. This is something we brought up to the Minister and asked for the government to exempt the COVID years from the funding model. They are now considering this. I can also confidently state that every public school board will be more than happy to work with any parent to accommodate them and their children in whatever learning approach works for the coming year – whether it’s in-person, directed or online learning, or homeschooling.

Your public school board trustees are fully committed to making this a great school year. So, on behalf of the members of PSBAA, I say, “Welcome back, everyone! We have missed you, and we are so happy to see you!” Stay well.