School board association president pleased with return to school

Despite cases of COVID-19 at a few schools in Saskatoon, the president of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association isn’t worried.

“There’s no issue with their plan. None whatsoever. All of the cases that have been identified and that we at the Response Planning Team have been made aware of were related to community transmission,” Shawn Davidson said Friday.

“They were related to things that happened outside of the school setting … That’s something that is not unexpected. We know that there is going to be some community transmission take place.”

Speaking to Gormley guest host Drew Remenda, Davidson was pleased with how the return to school has gone in the province.

He said protocols were followed, with students isolated when required. He said there hasn’t been any evidence of transmission within classrooms.

“That’s how the system and the plan was set out to work and so far, so good,” he said.

Davidson later applauded the government’s back-to-school plan, which the SSBA played a role in crafting as part of the province’s Response Planning Team.

Davidson praised the government for setting general guidelines but allowing local divisions to create their own individual plans.

“In Saskatchewan, we have had what I would call a pretty successful return to school and I believe the reason for that is because local voice has been respected,” he said.

“If you look at other provinces that have taken a far more top-down approach, not all of them, but some of the provinces that have taken a very top-down approach, the school start has not been nearly so smooth.”

Local authorities, he said, are the best ones to decide matters like whether to stick with online learning.

It would also be up to them to decide whether to bring back extracurricular activities – something that some members are considering, Davidson said.

“We are getting to a point now where … some of our boards are starting to consider offering some of those kinds of programs,” he said.

“They’ll be working closely with their local medical health officials because there are still a lot of directives in place around cohort management.”