GUELPH – The reopening of Upper Grand District School Board classrooms in September went “smoothly,” according to board officials.
“As an overall perspective on the start up for the system, in general our start up has been calm,” said superintendent Gary Slater at the Sept. 29 board meeting.
“It’s been orderly and students are adapting fairly well to their new routines.
“And in spite of the staggered entry and the time spent on routines, that has gone very well.”
Even asking students to wear face coverings has been positive.
“I would even say that many of our school staff are surprised at how well that went,” Slater said.
“Even our youngest students are wearing their masks and there are times that they elect to wear them in additional times such as recesses.”
Slater said the board also has the processes in place to deal with a COVID-19 case in staff and students.
As of Sept. 30 there have been two cases of COVID-19 identified in UGDSB schools, none of which are in Wellington County.
The first case was identified on Sept. 25 and Slater said Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health (WDGPH) contacted the board and the school, Glenbrook Elementary School in Shelburne, almost simultaneously.
“Contact tracing was started immediately by public health,” Slater said. “The school provided all of the information that they required.
“They required class lists, seating plans, contact information for students and their families.”
It took about a day for public health officials to contact all the families.
The class was closed and public health provided the expected return date for staff and students impacted.
“Our students that need to stay home and isolate are moving to remote instruction,” Slater said.
“That will be in place for the remainder of that isolation period and we were able to make that move quite quickly [because] we asked teachers to have their Google classrooms set up right from the beginning of the year in case a situation like this came up and it did so the class was ready to go and the switch over to online instruction went very quickly.”
Slater noted that the Ministry of Education was informed immediately of the positive case and all the appropriate reports were submitted.
Trustee Mike Foley said he has heard from two families with students in regular classes who have individual education plans (IEP) that are concerned the students are not receiving the same support because resource rooms are closed in schools.
Superintendent Carlos Zen said the resource rooms are closed because the board doesn’t want students mingling between cohorts.
Students are only supposed to have direct or indirect contact with 100 people a week.
“What we’ve done in secondary is that those special education resource teachers have been assigned out into classrooms so they are providing support to students directly in their classroom,” Zen said.
“Sometimes with the classroom teacher and sometimes on their own in small groups and that’s largely done to support the unique model.”
Superintendent Tracey Lindsay said that itinerant staff, who travel between schools, are also going into the classrooms, like speech language pathologists, English as a second language teachers, special education consultants etc.
“They are all going into schools both virtually and live and supporting students as well, so kids are still getting services that are required through their IEP,” she said.
“So for example if they need the services of a communication disorder assistant they are still going in.
“We’re just really watching the IEPs, the teachers that are developing the IEPs and we’re making sure that the services that they once had, they are getting in schools.”
Trustee Gail Campbell asked what COVID-19 testing is in place for itinerant teachers.
Lindsay said there isn’t a testing protocol in place, but they only go into schools when absolutely necessary.
“They’re tracking their movement and they’re trying to limit their movement to one, maybe two schools a day,” Lindsay said.
“They’re considered essential staff and they do need to sign in at the office so that the schools knows they’re there.”
Remote learning
Another new aspect of the school year is remote learning. Both the elementary school and the secondary school have begun.
The secondary remote school has about 1,450 students and about 70 teachers, while the elementary remote school has about 4,000 students and about 185 teachers.
Trustees had a number of questions about the new online school model.
Trustee Jen Edwards asked whether asynchronous learning, a model that doesn’t require real-time interaction, was being offered in the remote model.
Superintendent Brent McDonald said there is an exemption process in place for families who wish to participate in asynchronous learning for elementary students in the English stream.
However, the same cannot be said for French immersion.
“It’s a very small number currently of French immersion families that have asked for asynchronous support and they are spread out from JK all the way to Grade 8,” McDonald said.
“So the difficulty would be finding a classroom teacher that would be able to work in so many multiple grades for such a small number of students.”
And with teacher shortages throughout the province, especially French teachers, the task becomes more difficult.
The only current solution for French immersion students is to continue participating in synchronous learning or switch to the English stream for asynchronous learning, McDonald explained.
Edwards asked for clarification that students wouldn’t lose their French immersion spot at their school if they moved to asynchronous English stream now.
“Right now what we are saying to families is it’s of no fault of their own … so for those numbers of families at the moment we are holding their spot,” McDonald said.
Zen explained that the challenge is even greater in secondary school.
Currently there are no formal asynchronous learning requests there, but the board is working on some options should the situation arise.
In terms of French immersion, Zen said it’s not offered remotely by the UGDSB for secondary students.
“A large part of that was because we were scrambling to get that school up and running,” Zen said.
“It is our intent though going forward into quad two to provide some immersion instruction for those students who need it.
“So we are currently working on some plans to provide that to our students.”
Lindsay also explained students participating in remote learning who require an IEP will be receiving supports through Google Meet.
“We may be pulling them out for the one to one if they need to see a social worker, [child and youth worker] or the speech language folks, but we’re really just trying to adapt,” Lindsay said
“So they are still getting the services that they require. It just looks very different.”
Home schooling
McDonald said there is also a group of about 300 elementary students who have moved to home schooling this year.
“Our next plan is to also reach out to these families over the course of the next couple of weeks to ensure they are aware of the various options and how the rollout has gone in both our remote and in person schools and encourage them to join back up with us again,” he said.
Next steps
The board will be sending out a survey in mid-October for families to say whether they want their students to move from in-person to online instruction or vice versa.
The move will happen sometime in November for both elementary and secondary students.
