Saskatchewan now has a back-to-school plan, but teachers and advocates are saying the plan has serious holes.
The province announced what officials called the "Safe Schools Plan" August 5, providing a picture of what students, teachers and school staff may see in Saskatchewan schools this fall. The plan includes eight seperate components, meant to serve as guidelines for school divisions, which will be tasked with instituting the changes.
Sanitizing and social distancing are the order of the day. Any physical contact, including hugs and high-fives, is to be avoided. Outdoor classrooms may be used whenever possible, while indoors, indoor classrooms are supposed to be reconfigured to minimize contact with students. More hand sanitizer will be made available, while custodial staff are asked to sanitize school facilities as much as possible. Special rules will be put in place for students with special needs or immune system issues.
Dedicated entrances and exits will be in place for all schools and recess, lunch and class change times will be staggered to keep the hallways less crowded. One-way hallways for students and staff are encouraged.
Parents and guardians are asked to check children for illness and keep any possibly sick kids home. The provincial plan includes each school having a dedicated area for quarantine to keep any students who may have COVID-19 symptoms before they can be taken home.
Buses will have assigned seating and kids from the same household will be kept together, while parents are advised to drive kids to school if at all possible. Buses will be cleaned and sanitized after each student run.
Along with the plan came four different levels of school reopening, ranging from Level 1 to Level 4. Level 1 will be a return to school as close to last fall as possible, while Level 4 will mean moving classes from in-class to remote learning, similar to how classes were after in-class learning was suspended last March.
Mask use by students, staff or teachers will not be mandatory. No mention of reduced class sizes or how classrooms will be socially distanced was found in the government announcement, nor was there mention of what could spark moving from Level 1 to other levels in any school division.
The plan immediately received a negative response from Saskatchewan unions and activists. Carla Beck, opposition education critic for the Saskatchewan NDP, called the plan "the worst plan in Canada."
"Other governments have provided detailed plans - what the Sask. Party has released today is what other governments provided months ago as a starting point in their planning," read an NDP press release.
“Our Saskatchewan NDP team has spent months talking to educators, health professionals and families. There is a massive gap between what they are telling us needs to happen and what we see today from this Saskatchewan Party government. What [provincial education minister] Gord Wyant has produced is not a plan for schools - it is a plan to fail the test of protecting students, families and education professionals.”
Others said the plan places too much of the burden of planning on teachers, school staff and local school divisions.
“You can have plans on paper, but the fact is the government is placing the burden on front-line staff without extra resources, without adequate preparation time and without the additional cleaning staff necessary to keep students safe,” said Jackie Christianson, an educational assistant and the chair of the CUPE Saskatchewan education workers steering committee in a news release.
“The plans for reopening schools are in need of a reality check from the front lines. Education support staff are stretched far too thin, we are being left without the safety protections needed from COVID-19 and we are not being heard.”
The school year in Saskatchewan is slated to start as early as Sept. 1.
