Wrestling to make sense of the Alberta school re-entry plan

As I (and so many parents) wrestle with Alberta’s school re-entry plan, I acknowledge that there will be an element of risk and no plan will be perfect. However, recklessness at the expense of the health and safety of our children, teachers, and support staff is completely unacceptable.

We’ve heard countries like Denmark have been studied on their approach to school re-entry so I read up on what Denmark, Norway, and Germany have done (here’s one such article): to summarize, their governments worked with and supported schools to keep students and teachers safe. As that article explains, Denmark’s approach to cohorting is to have “micro-groups of pupils arrive at a separate time, eat their lunch separately, stay in their own zones in the playground, and are taught by one teacher.” And their approach to class size is to limit classes to “about a dozen pupils in these groups. Social distancing means that’s about the maximum number who can go into one room, which requires dividing classes and teaching staff.” Come back to Alberta’s plan and there are some stark differences.

From a health and safety perspective, to say that children are more likely to recover from COVID willfully ignores that we don’t fully understand the impacts on long-term health. What we are learning is that recovery doesn’t seem to be to the same state of previous health. Knowingly risking the lives and future health of a generation of children is negligent.

From an access to education perspective, we should be concerned that this creates a divide between people who can afford (and choose) to hire private tutors/send their kids to private schools (which are likely able to accommodate small class sizes), and those that can’t. I’m comfortable with people having choice, as long as it’s not a choice between health and education. Safe public schools accessible to everyone is the only acceptable minimum.

From an economics point of view, we can’t have a robust economy without Albertans working and spending their money. Our economy will be hard-pressed to deal with another lockdown or parents having to step back from the workforce (thereby reducing the tax base and level of consumer spending) due to outbreaks in schools. Refusing to acknowledge and adjust to new economic realities is ignorant.

Here are some questions we should all be asking (repeatedly if need be) until we get clear answers.

1. Class size in summer school was limited to 15 students and allowed for distancing. By what logic does one conclude it’s “safe” to double that to 30 students?

2. University campus buildings, rec centres, convention and banquet halls, community halls, and other large spaces will potentially be available during the school year. What would prevent us from renting those spaces to accommodate students (perhaps grade 7-12)?

3. There are 10 post-secondary institutions that have recently graduated hundreds (thousands?) of new teachers. What would prevent us from signing them to a one-year teaching agreement?

4. In March 2020, education funding was reduced by $128M. When we hear “additional funding”, does this mean committing $248M (reinstating previous funding AND providing an additional $120M)? Or simply restoring what was cut (less $8M)?

5. In May 2020, $250M for school capital improvement projects that were one- to two-years out was fast-tracked to stimulate the economy and help get Albertans working again. Those funds were not intended to be used for preparing schools for re-entry. If that money will now be re-purposed, what happens to funding available for future school improvement projects?

6. Using the school board reserve in our response to COVID-19 will deplete it, to what extent we aren’t sure. What will be done to ensure the reserve fund is restored?

Without answers to these questions (and many more as logistics are figured out), I’m worried we’ll find ourselves in a much worse predicament than if we’d invested in the health and safety of everyone – directly and indirectly – connected by our school systems.

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