Union leaders representing teachers at Lakehead Public Schools say so far things are looking good, when it comes to COVID-19 preparations in local classroom.
Both Mike Judge, head of the local branch of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, and Rich Seeley, who leads the local branch of the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers’ Federation, had high praise on Thursday for the job done by Lakehead Public Schools readying classrooms for students, education workers and teachers to return this week.
Their reaction was less favourable about the provincial response.
The Ontario government pulled the rug out from underneath local school boards and their return-to-class plans on a number of occasions, including just two weeks before schools were initially scheduled to reopen on Sept. 3.
It makes the board’s response that much more remarkable, Judge said.
“Really, from the top down, from senior admin right down through all of our teaching staff, they’ve done a great job. It’s been a lot of hard work and we’ve been really eager to get to that Day 1 and just get this rolling,” Judge said.
That doesn’t mean schools are out of the woods.
There’s still nagging concern because schools have reopened in a pandemic, even if Thunder Bay has had zero confirmed active COVID-19 cases in more than a week-and-a-half. The danger still persists, Judge said, and it shows.
“And I’d be lying to you if I said that staff weren’t really stressed out. There have been a lot of tears. There has been a lot of concern. As you know, there have been a number of staff who have opted to teach virtually in our new virtual school, due to health concerns or health concerns of loved ones,” Judge said.
“Those concerns are heavy on everyone’s minds and certainly top of mind is we can’t get away from it. We’re still in the middle of this globally.”
Judge and Seeley said the province needs to step up and do more to ensure safety in local schools.
Both the board and the unions have a join message, he added.
“The only thing that’s going to change this, to make things safer, is additional money to reduce class sizes and reduce driving on buses,” Judge said.
City schools are already facing a bus-driver shortage, and late last week Student Transportation Services Thunder Bay announced it was temporarily halting a dozen routes until replacement drivers could be found. Fear of catching COVID-19 was cited as the main reason many drivers weren’t back behind the wheel this week.
Seeley said like the bus drivers, there is still a lot of anxiety in the schools among his 200-member contingent.
“Not necessarily over the safety measures, because I think our board has made them as safe as possible, given the limitation the province gave them,” he said. “We’re not happy that we have full classrooms of 30-plus in some cases, so we can’t do the social distancing.”
