No relief in return to classroom, teachers' unions worry, unless province provides safety plan

No one should feel at ease if students return to the classroom for in-person learning on Monday, says Patrick Etmanski.

The president of the Waterloo region branch of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association says that's because with COVID-19 spreading in the community at an increased rate, it's very likely some classes will be sent home or whole schools closed if there aren't enough teachers or staff to work.

Etmanski says everyone wants students to be in school and teachers want to be in the classroom. But it also needs to be a safe environment for everyone.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce is scheduled to make an announcement Wednesday afternoon about the return-to-classroom date. Etmanski says he wants to make sure there's some kind of safety plan included because as he sees it, there isn't one.

"Nothing is different. In fact, in a lot of ways, it's worse than it was before," he said Tuesday after reports Monday night that students will return to school next week. That news was confirmed by CBC News by a spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford.

Etmanski said in December, when there were cases of COVID-19 in the schools, those cases were publicly reported.

"Families would learn about it and people can deal with it appropriately. Now, that's not even going to happen ... So cases in schools are not going to be reported. Families will not know if there's a if there's a positive case in the class. In fact, we won't even know if a positive case is a positive case because, how are those people going to be tested?" he said.

"It's a disaster. It's a mess."

'So many unknowns'

Jeff Pelch, president of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario Waterloo Region, said he, too, is unsure what has changed between late December when the province announcing schools would move to remote learning, and now.

"I think one of the big questions that we have is, what has been done? What has been put into place to make sure that schools are going to be safe next week?" he said.

Pelch said there are concerns about the low vaccination rates of children aged five to 11 — not quite half of children in the region have received a first dose. He's also concerned that cases won't be monitored in the schools. 

"We still don't have a concrete plan to address any of the anticipated increases in staff absences, which are likely to occur next week just because of the new isolation protocols," he said.

"There are so many unknowns, and it's that frustration about the unknowns ... really frustrating our members and creating a lot of concerns and a lot of questions that we just don't have answers to."

Green leader calls for school stats

Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner is also calling on the government to provide transparency about what has been done, and he said he hopes Lecce addresses it in the announcement Wednesday afternoon.

"We need the premier and the education minister to show some leadership here," Schreiner said in an interview Tuesday, calling for a province-wide database on safe school statistics. That database would list things like: 

• How many N95 masks are available to educators, staff and students.
• How many HEPA air filtration units are in a school and information on air quality.
• Vaccination rates of educators and students.
• The number of rapid and PCR test kits available through the school.
• Case and outbreak numbers.
• Class sizes.

"That type of information, I think, is vital to instill in public confidence in the safety of our schools, and we need the premier to be transparent and honest with people about it," Schreiner said.

Early in the winter school break, Kitchener Centre NDP MPP Laura Mae Lindo called for enhanced safety measures at schools including free rapid tests, mandatory vaccination for all teachers and education workers and reduced class sizes.

Province doing 'everything we can'

During a media briefing Tuesday, Health Minister Christine Elliott said the government is doing "everything we can to make schools safer for students" and indicated Lecce would be able to answer specific questions on Wednesday.

Matthew Anderson, CEO of Ontario Health, was part of Elliott's press conference. He said there may be an opportunity to do PCR testing through the schools and that way, positive cases could be reported by the individual schools.

"We're looking at that right now as a further measure to try to support the reopening of the schools," he said.

Lecce is scheduled to speak at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and is expected to be joined by Ontario's chief medical officer Dr. Kieran Moore.