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Q+A: Thames Valley school board unveils back-to-class plans

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With the start of the 2021-22 school year only weeks away, the Thames Valley District school board on Monday announced its return-to-class plan for the nearly 80,000 students in the London region who are heading back to in-person classes amid COVID-19’s fourth wave.

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It’s not a full “back to normal” plan, education director Mark Fisher said, but it will give students a sense of normalcy after the coronavirus pandemic upended the education system for the last two school years.

Fisher spoke with The Free Press on Monday, and here’s what he had to say about students going back to the classroom:

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WHAT WILL CLASS LOOK LIKE?

Fisher described the 2021 return to classes as a hybrid model of the pre-pandemic and the post-COVID-19 school experience. Masks will still be there but so will sports, clubs and other extra-curricular activities.

“We’re still going to emphasize our health and safety precautions. We’re going to have extensive cleaning protocols, daily screening, hand washing, things like that,” Fisher said. “However, we’re also going to be reintroducing clubs and activities, sports teams, music programs, arts programs, nutrition programs.

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“So it’s kind of like the pre-pandemic school but maintaining a lot of those really rigorous health and safety protocols.”


MORE ABOUT MASKS

Masks will remain mandatory for teachers and staff as well as students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 while inside schools. Social distancing will be encouraged but students will be allowed to remove face coverings while doing activities outdoors and during recess.


COHORTS, CLASS FORMATS

As previously announced by the board, gone is the quad-mester model for high school students, in which students took two courses for 10 weeks before moving to two new subjects the following 10 weeks. This time around, students will go back to studying four classes per semester, studying two courses a day one week and the other two courses the following week.

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“It’s not fully back to the traditional model but, again, it’s kind of a hybrid model that’s in between the quad-mester and the semester,” Fisher said.

Elementary students will go back to their pre-pandemic format, Fisher said.


VACCINATIONS

Though making vaccinations mandatory is a decision the Ontario government has to make, the Thames Valley school board is encouraging all students and staff to get their COVID-19 shots, Fisher said.

Students who are fully vaccinated will not be asked to isolate if a positive case is detected in their classrooms or they were exposed to the virus. Unvaccinated students, however, will have to quarantine for a two-week period under the same circumstances.

“We do recognize . . . that the higher percentage of staff and students that are vaccinated, the safer our schools are. So we still have three weeks before school starts, anyone out there who hasn’t been vaccinated, we need you to go out and get vaccinated,” Fisher said.

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EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Cancelled during the first wave of the virus and all of the last school year, sports and other activities will be allowed this time around, though safety protocols like masking will remain in place, Fisher said, adding they are still waiting for final guidelines from the province.

“I think it’s a risk-reward analysis,” he said.

“It was very hard for students not to be doing track and field, cross country, or drama or being in a band, and so these are things that add beauty and light to school, so we really need to have those things come back and we’re confident that the majority of those activities will come back.”


THE DELTA VARIANT’S THREAT

Fisher said, for the most part, COVID-19 cases and outbreak protocols will remain the same as last school year. That includes notifying parents when a case is identified or an outbreak is declared.

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Again, fully vaccinated students won’t be asked to quarantine when cases are detected, but that doesn’t mean schools won’t be ready to close classrooms if health officials deem it necessary, Fisher added.

“I think the first thing I’d like to say is that there’s been a very, very low transmission rate in schools and schools, in my opinion, will continue to be safe spots,” Fisher said.

“When cases are identified, we are more than prepared to close a classroom or even a school on a temporary basis if necessary. . . . I hope that we’ll be doing very little of those school closures, but it’s very difficult to predict. And if we do have to make that move, we are ready.”


REMOTE LEARNING

About 96 per cent of the Thames Valley board’s estimated 81,000 students have opted for in-person classes. As mandated by the province, the school board is ready to pivot to online classes if needed, Fisher said.

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“All of our teachers are trained on the remote learning platforms; we’ve distributed thousands upon thousands of devices out to students, so we are ready, literally, a moment’s notice to shift the entire system from face-to-face to virtual if we have to.”


FISHER’S HOPES FOR 2021-22

“My hopes are that we get to the majority, if not all of the school year, with face-to-face learning; my hopes are that we reinstate these extracurricular activities and by the end of the year, students can have proms and graduations and all of those great things. We’ll continue to put all those health and safety protocols in place, but I want our students to have as positive a year as possible. As a school district, I believe we’re a provincial leader in terms of our health and safety readiness, and also our ability to pivot from one platform to another, so I am very confident that this will be a productive and positive school year for staff and students.”

jjuha@postmedia.com

CORONAVIRUS CASES: THE NUMBERS

(*Figures for Southwestern Ontario as of Monday, Aug. 16, 2021, at 4 p.m.)

  • Ontario — 556,087 cases
  • London-Middlesex — 12,974 cases, 232 deaths
  • Elgin-Oxford — 4,025 cases, 84 deaths
  • Brant — 3,504 cases, 20 deaths
  • Chatham-Kent — 1,955 cases, 17 deaths
  • Sarnia-Lambton — 3,656 cases, 68 deaths
  • Huron Perth — 1,978 cases, 57 deaths
  • Grey-Bruce — 2,198 cases, 9 deaths
  • Windsor-Essex — 17,280 cases, 437 deaths
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