Regina school divisions in midst of pandemic planning for back to school

School divisions in Saskatchewan have a lot of homework to get through before the students come back to class in the fall.

The subject is figuring out the details of the pandemic back-to-school plan.

The province released its guidelines in June but they’re very broad, so school divisions have to come up with their own plans to fill in the gaps.

At the end of June, school divisions had to submit their return-to-learning plans to be reviewed by the Ministry of Education but Darren Boldt, deputy director of student achievement with Regina Public Schools, said even that plan is very broad.

“We’re not exactly sure if a detailed plan at the end of June would meet the needs of what might be, at the end of August, any restrictions that might be in place. I think for now, we are going with the fact that the ministry has said and the government has said that all students and all teachers will be back in schools and functioning with 100 per cent capacity,” said Boldt.

The division has now come up with project planning teams that will take on the details over the summer. The detailed planning is quite an undertaking because there are a lot of things to work out.

“How many classrooms will they need hand sanitizer for? Will they need plastic guards for the admin assistants in the office or is there significant distance? How many staff do we have in terms of if we need to provide PPE?” said Boldt, giving a small example of considerations needed for some of the things like personal protective equipment that have become part of normal life under the pandemic.

Cleaning is a part of every reopening plan and schools are no different. Boldt said there is a planning team just for facilities, looking at things like cleaning regimens in schools as well as technology upgrades to clean schools better. Boldt said the schools will probably need to hire extra support staff to meet the requirements.

Different planning will need to be done for other staff like educational assistants and staff to work with students who have intensive needs.

Boldt said the division is also trying to figure out how to provide good, curriculum-based education to students whose parents will choose to keep them home. He doesn’t know how many students that might mean.

“We anticipate there will be some who will stay at home for health reasons and for other reasons but we’re just not in a position right now to guess,” he said.

Nutrition and food programs are going to look very different in the new year because Boldt said there are some specific restrictions there.

“(Food has) to be individually packed and not in a quote-unquote cafeteria kind of style … (It must be) delivered to the individual students, not prepared by other students,” he said.

Boldt explained that not having food prepared by students will be tricky because the majority of canteens from school to school serve food prepared by students.

One of the wider considerations the teams will have to work on is how to deal with sanitizing all of the resources and equipment shared between students.

“How many students will touch a basketball in a phys. ed class? In a high school shop, how many students will be using the same power tools? In a practical and applied arts class, whether it’s elementary or high school, how much sharing goes on in the preparation of food? They’re all using the same utensils,” said Boldt.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the constant need for substitute teachers.

“We need as many substitute teachers as we can possibly have on our sub list,” said Boldt.

There could be larger need for subs this year as guidelines around leaving the house when you’re feeling unwell are tighter, but Boldt said the division always hires as many subs as it can adequately find. A team is figuring out what the guidelines will be around subs moving between schools and classrooms.

When it comes to elementary and high schools, the planning with have to be very different.

“In elementary schools, you’d be able to keep students, for the most part, with their classroom and very limited to no movement in a day. But then you consider a high school where students have five different classes and would need to take those classes from very different teachers with different expertise,” said Boldt.

Boldt is also anticipating figuring out ways to allow parents to see the building changes and guidelines while also following recommendations to keep the public out as much as possible.

“I can imagine many, many parents will need to feel that the school has adequately planned for washing stations and hand sanitization and all of the things one wouldn’t think of when they’re sending their children back to school in September, just to alleviate what might be fears of theirs or concerns of theirs,” said Boldt.

Once the division works out its guidelines, it will pass them on to the individual schools so they can tailor the rules to their particular needs. Boldt pointed out that the 57 schools are very different, from the buildings themselves to the capacity — there’s a school in Regina with only 200 students, and another with more than 1,500 and 100 staff members.

Boldt is expecting the firmer, school-level details to be figured out in August.

Regina’s Catholic schools

There’s a similar flurry of work happening at the Regina Catholic School Division.

Spokesperson Twylla West said the division is still figuring out things like what its enhanced cleaning protocols will look like. She said some of the provincial guidelines are very broad and don’t specify how some cleaning needs to be enhanced.

When it comes to the cleaning workload, she said it could be a situation where the students are asked to wipe down their desks at the end of the day.

West said the division is going to have to hire more people because caretakers were already working hard and there’s no way they can do all the enhanced cleaning and disinfecting on their own.

Food programs will be different, just like in the public division. West said they’ll also be more expensive because the food needs to be pre-packaged, which costs more than foods that could be shared among a class.

Some changes are a little more straightforward. There will be strict seating plans on buses and no travel for extracurricular activities like football. There will be almost no large assemblies and liturgies will be done over the intercom system with the kids in their own classrooms.

Then there are some things that are very up in the air, such as whether band and choirs will be able to continue, how to figure out students and staff bubbles in classes, and dealing with any possible mental health problems the kids come back to school with.

Neither the public nor Catholic division could say yet how much extra these precautions and workers might cost.