Questions continue around back-to-school plans

Last month, the provincial government released its guidelines for reopening Saskatchewan schools in the fall, but some teachers and parents still have their hands raised with questions.

Emails 980 CJME has received from teachers include questions around whether personal protective equipment and temperature checks are OK in class, how substitute teachers going from school to school will be handled, and whether more caretakers will be hired or the extra cleaning responsibilities will fall to teachers.

Those are among the concerns NDP Education Critic Carla Beck has.

Sask. NDP MLA Carla Beck (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

Beck wants clearer guidelines for school divisions that are “realistic” for the current conditions in the schools. She also said a lot of her concern lies in the costs of the measures, saying they should be fully funded.

“We know that we can reasonably expect increased (substitute teacher) costs, for example, that we should be looking at reduced class sizes as almost every other province has looked at, (and at) personal protective equipment,” said Beck.

Schools were closed in March due to the threat of COVID-19 and learning was offered online. On June 9, the province announced students and staff members would be returning to school in the fall.

Beck said there are many holes in the back-to-school plan and that the education minister could go a long way in providing reassurances to concerned parents and teachers by presenting something stronger.

“I don’t know that there’s a person in the province who doesn’t want children to be back in classrooms in the fall. It also is the case that there isn’t a person in the province who wants to put kids or teachers at risk,” said Beck.

Education Minister Gord Wyant said the guidelines are meant to just be guidelines from the province’s chief medical health officer and the operational details are being left to the school divisions.

“Certainly the guidelines didn’t provide for any personal protective equipment or anything, but to the extent the school divisions think that that might be something that they want to use, they’re certainly not prevented from doing that,” Wyant said.

Wyant said his ministry is reviewing the return-to-school plans now.

Education Minister Gord Wyant. (File photo by Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

“The school divisions have been receiving a number of inquiries and we expect that the plans that have been prepared will be responsive to those questions and those concerns,” said Wyant.

According to Wyant, the ministry has been fielding a number of calls and questions as well.

Budget spending for the coming year was first presented in March and when the full budget was presented in June, Beck points out it didn’t have any extra money to deal with COVID-19 measures.

Beck said that many schools in the province are either at or over capacity, that many have had to run a deficit with the money the province has given them even without extra pandemic costs, and that the funding per student has gone down over the past few years.

When asked about extra funding needs, Wyant first pointed to savings many divisions have realized with not having in-class lessons for the last three months of the 2019-20 school year.

He said his ministry is working with the divisions to find out what resources might be needed. Wyant also points to the $200-million COVID-19 contingency funding that was revealed in the June budget.

“There is an expectation, of course, that if there are additional resources that are required, the government will be there to support them, and I’ve said that. We’re certainly not going to make that a difficult process for any of the school divisions. We want to make sure that kids are safe in their classrooms (and) that teachers have the comfort that they need to continue to provide in-class learning this fall,” said Wyant.

However, Beck said that fund is meant to cover any extra pandemic costs for every ministry across government. She also said that “contingency” implies there’s something we can’t reasonably predict, and extra costs in this situation can be predicted.

“There’s no way around it — the increased need for staffing, increased cleaning, hopefully social distancing, which really has to be a part of this plan. All of those things are going to cost money,” said Beck.

In the end, Beck repeated funding concerns over schools the NDP has had on its list for a while, that classrooms aren’t being fully funded and there needs to be thought about proper investment in education in the province.