It’s good news after two years of disruption, which have seen frequent classroom and school closures due to COVID-19 outbreaks and regular shifts to distance learning across entire boards.
But when students in the greater Toronto area return to classrooms on Tuesday and Wednesday, there will be higher levels of viral activity in the community, as well as a greater strain on the health care system, than in either of the last two Septembers.
The Ontario government has also announced the end of the mandatory isolation period for those who test positive for COVID-19, potentially paving the way for some asymptomatic staff and students to return to schools while still infected.
This, most experts agree, will lead to more spread within schools.
“I’m very concerned. If you look at our dashboard right now compared to August 2021, you’ll see across a number of indicators that the risk is much higher. If you look at the number of tests coming back positive, if you look at the signal of sewage, if you look at the number of people being hospitalized, all of these indicators suggest, depending on which one you look at, that things could be five to ten times worse than August 2021,” he told CP24.com this week Dr. Fahad Razak, the scientific director of the soon-to-be-disbanded Ontario Science Advisory Panel;
“So we have significantly worse COVID indicators, we clearly have a crisis in hospitals, and we have the risk of a resurgence of flu season and other respiratory viruses based on what we’re seeing in the southern hemisphere.  If you put all of that together, this could be an extremely challenging and tough fall and winter season.”
Ontario lifted the mask mandate for most settings, including public schools, earlier in March and will keep that policy in place for the start of this academic year.
Schools are also no longer required to publicly report information on absenteeism rates, although some boards, including the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), will continue to do so.
School boards will again offer distance education, following an order from the Ministry of Education, but fewer students will be enrolled.  At TDSB, about 4,800 students opted for online learning this fall compared to 25,000 last September.
Razak, himself a father of two school-age children, told CP24.com that classrooms, by their very nature, are “high-risk environments,” especially at the elementary level where vaccination rates are lower and students can be less likely to ‘use infection prevention strategies effectively’.

A student looks out the window of a school bus as it arrives at Bancroft Elementary School in Montreal on August 31, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson However, she said there are some things parents can do to protect their children while ensuring they benefit from a more consistent return to interpersonal learning. “For us, for our children, we will ask them to continue wearing high-quality masks as long as possible. You know, they’re young, so obviously as a parent you do what you can. They may not wear it all the time. But if they can wear it, at least some of the time or most of the time, that will keep them safer than not wearing it,” he said. “At the same time. We’ll also do our best to keep them out of school if they’re sick. So if they have the flu, we’ll do our testing, but we’ll try to keep them out as much as we can. The third thing is that we still prioritize activities as much as possible for those in safer environments. So can we meet with some of their friends and other parents and families in the park instead of an indoor environment? We continue their social lives, but just we try to do it in safer environments.”

PERSONAL LEARNING HAS BEEN INTERRUPTED FOR THREE SCHOOL YEARS

Ontario was able to maintain face-to-face learning for much of the first term in 2021-2022, but was ultimately forced to close all schools for a roughly two-week period in January as the Omicron strain led to a rapid increase in infection across the province.
This time, educators hope there will be more consistency for students.
But at the same time, they are concerned about the province’s abrupt decision to change isolation guidelines for those who test positive for COVID-19 just days before the start of the school year.
“You know the government and others who are advocating for this change have said that we have to rely on people to make the right decisions going forward and that by wearing masks and keeping your distance and staying home when they need to stay home, but for five years – the seniors don’t work that way,” Ontario Federation of Teachers First Vice-President David Mastin, who works as a teacher in the Durham region, told CP24.com this week.
“It’s funny when you talk to an elementary school teacher about taking personal responsibility for something so serious and so important.  I mean, these are four- and five-year-olds, they don’t have that self-regulation.  “Educators or parents can put a mask in a backpack, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into the types of responsible decisions that both the government and others are advocating.”

FILE – First graders wear masks as they attend class at Honore Mercier Elementary School Tuesday, March 9, 2021 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Mastin said educators are, on the whole, eager to return to a regular learning environment, having learned firsthand through the pandemic about some of the shortcomings of online learning. However, he said some are still very fearful about the risk of contracting COVID-19 in classrooms, which he said are unfortunately “perfect sources of transmission of this type of airborne virus.” “You know, we’re going to have COVID in our schools, and it’s just a matter of how much of a burden it puts on our health care system and what kind of impact that has on interpersonal learning,” he said. “We have a government screaming that it wants to get back to normal in our schools and blaming the teachers’ federations and teachers for possible work as their contracts expire. But the government, on the other hand, is making decisions that could, in fact, jeopardize a steady and uninterrupted return to school in September.”

GOODBYE COHORT AND MANDATORY PHYSICAL DISTANCE

As students return to classrooms this week they are likely to be greeted by what looks like a more normal learning environment, with things like grouping and mandatory physical distancing no longer in place.
The government will still provide N95 masks to teachers if they choose to wear one.
It will also maintain an online school screening tool for students who develop symptoms.
The updated guidance will be that anyone with new or worsening symptoms should stay home until their symptoms improve for at least 24 hours, or 48 hours for nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea.
Karen Littlewood, president of the Ontario Federation of Secondary Teachers, told CP24.com this week that teachers are mostly excited about the prospect of a full year of uninterrupted learning.
The concern, he said, is that lifting public health restrictions could ultimately jeopardize that if there is a surge in infections.
He was also concerned about the spread of COVID in an age group where uptake of boosters was slow.
“Just like the general population, we have members who want to never see a mask again.  But really the majority of our members want to have some protections in place,” he said.  “Everyone wants things to go back to the way they were before, but I don’t think we’re at a place yet where we can just go back.”

MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORTS NEEDED WHEN SCHOOLS OPEN

Regular breaks in interpersonal learning over the past three school years have not come without a cost.
Experts said student psychology has suffered during the pandemic, with a marked increase in the number of children seeking help for depression and anxiety.
In fact, a Center for Addiction and Mental Health survey released last spring found that nearly half of Ontario students (47 per cent) reported moderate to severe levels of psychological distress in the past month.
“We’ve seen mental health challenges on the rise, but that’s only for people who are able to recognize them, or for parents who recognize that a child can experience learning loss related to anxiety or depression.  So I think we’re dealing with a lot as we go into the next week and try to help our kids adjust to the new normal,” Deepy Sur, CEO of the Ontario Association of Social Workers, told CP24.com.
“Stunning statistics from some of our colleagues tell us that on the front line now one in three parents say their child is missing school because of stress.  This is huge.”
As schools prepare to reopen, many organizations are working to ensure mental health support is in place to ease the transition for students.
Sur said providing consistent personalized learning for the first time from the 2018-2019 academic year will be “incredibly important” in supporting struggling students.
However, she also encouraged parents to create a “safe space” for children to talk freely about mental health challenges and to be on the lookout for warning signs, especially during the first few weeks of school.
“My biggest concern is for the children who are suffering and the children who are suffering in silence and who are not getting the support they need.  Normality (for the past two and a half years) has been replaced, for some, by…