Ontario students won't be returning to in-person learning after this week's spring break.
The province announced today that schools are moving to remote learning after the April break, which started today. There is no date from the province for when students could return to school.
Last week, when the state of emergency was declared and the stay-at-home order was put in place, the indication was that kids would be returning to class.
Today, however, Premier Doug Ford said there is a "rapidly deteriorating situation with a record number of COVID cases and hospital admissions threatening to overwhelm our health care system."
"As I have always said we will do whatever it takes to ensure everyone stays safe. By keeping kids home longer after spring break we will limit community transmission, take pressure off our hospitals and allow more time to rollout our COVID-19 vaccine plan," he said in a news release.
Orillia mother Tina Rowe, like many, is now left having to work, teach, and parent from home for the third time during the pandemic.
Rowe is the mother of an 18-year-old Fleming College student and a 10-year-old Monsignor Lee Catholic School student.
“It’s a real challenge with trying to work from home, and we don’t have space in our house to have everyone have their own private office,” Rowe said.
“We have four people all trying to work out of the house currently and we just don’t have the room.”
Rowe says her biggest frustration with having to move her children to online learning platforms is the lack of communication from the government.
“If the government had planned, scheduled, or timed it better, and had some sort of warning for parents who needed to get day-care or needed to schedule things differently, it would have been helpful. This constant last-minute notice is the biggest stress on parents,” she said.
Rowe says it’s nearly impossible to tend to her children while working every day, and schools being open is essential to run her household efficiently.
“I don’t know what the structure will look like this time, but last time my daughter only had a couple of hours of schoolwork each day, so when she’s not busy it's really difficult for us to get our work done,” she said.
Rowe says her daughters have been feeling the mentally and emotionally draining effects of not being in school consistently during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When I think about my youngest daughter, she hasn’t had a play date in about a year really, she hasn’t been with friends, which leads to more screen time so she can FaceTime with friends,” she explained.
“With sports being closed as well, there isn’t the physical outlet, there isn’t the social outlet, so it’s been a lot of just being home, and they really miss having structure.”
Rowe is becoming worried that her youngest daughter will start to suffer from the effects of being isolated.
“My worry is how she will internalize it, how she will perceive it, Mom and Dad are too busy working, it’s a constant re-enforcing of ‘not now', she said.
“I feel worried that she’s going to feel neglected or like she’s not a priority, not having a connection with other people.”
Rowe says the effects on her oldest daughter might be worse.
“The impact on my college daughter has been the greatest because she’s had COVID herself and she was one of the kids who lost her Grade 12 year, a trip to Kenya, and all sorts of different things,” she said.
“At this point, we are feeling hopeless. It’s so overwhelming.”
Rowe is fearful that her daughters will likely not be returning to school until the fall, which she disagrees with. Rowe fully believes that schools being open is essential to a healthy community.
“We are not seeing the high numbers in the schools. I don’t think what we are doing here is working, but instead it’s creating a whole different problem,” she said.
“I think the government is trying to get control of something that they have lost control of, and I don’t think they have a good way of going about it.”
Severn mother Laura Walters has been off work recently to take care of her newborn baby. She is also a mother to a four-year-old kindergarten student and a seven-year-old Grade 2 student who both attend Great Moose Adventures, a private school in Gravenhurst.
Walters says trying to raise a newborn while being forced to look after her other children and home school them is “just not manageable at all.”
“It’s hard on my mental health, it’s stressful, but we will manage and get past this,” Walters said.
“The kids get bored, they have more screen time than we would like, and then they start fighting with each other which is hard on everyone. They get bored of each other because I can’t play with them 24/7.”
Walters says the children really struggle with the online learning system and don’t benefit from it much at all.
“They really struggle, they miss their friends, and they want COVID to be over,” she said.
“My four-year-old said recently that he wishes COVID was over so he could play with his friend, it’s heartbreaking.”
While Walters believes her family can power through with schools being closed, she worries about families who have little resources.
“When I think about how we are struggling I think about how other families are doing, families who don’t have the resources that we have…How are they managing? How far behind are they going to be?” Walters asks herself.
“The kids were already behind a year because the online learning is just not the same. They aren’t able to do as much as they would in a classroom. So it’s two years now that these kids have lost, and some of them will never catch up and will be behind forever and it’s not fair, it’s not right," she said.
Walters says she is concerned with how long the government might keep the schools closed, and she believes the issue could have been avoided or better planned for.
“They could have had a plan all rready, but they’ve wasted days. There is no reason why they can’t get teachers, early childhood educators, and admin staff vaccinated this week. They might have to cancel some other people’s appointments, but there is no reason they can’t get them vaccinated,” she said.
“I feel like Ford doesn’t care about the teachers; his government just digs their heels in at every turn they can.”
That's a sentiment shared by Jen Hare, who is not only a parent and educator but also serves as president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation.
“Yesterday we saw an article that said we were 100 per cent going back and today we learned we are not," she said. "The pivoting on families, on educators and on kids is just not fair. That’s really the heartbreak of this announcement.”
As a parent of a school-aged child, Hare knows the importance of in-person learning, but noted for now being online is what is safest.
“It’s so important kids have the ability to be with other kids and be with their teachers in a school. I know that as a mom and (seeing) how well my son does with in person learning… but the problem is they can’t return to in person until it’s 100 per cent safe,” she said.
On the other hand, Hare says there is a sense of relief with today's announcement.
“It’s a sense of relief in one way for our members to know they don’t need to go into schools that are potentially unsafe, especially when we look at the crisis that is the Bradford area. It’s getting pretty desperate down there,” Hare said.
Hare also acknowledges the move back online will be a challenge.
“It’s hard for working families and for our members who have kids at home who are now going to pivot to remote learning, but it’s something that’s necessary to keep us safe and try to reduce the continually escalating numbers," she said.
Marie Reynolds, who is a Grade 3-4 teacher and the parent of a child in junior kindergarten, said as a parent, she can somewhat appreciate the break from the chaos that is getting out the door each day with two young children. However, she said her oldest will definitely be disappointed she won’t be going back to school.
“We don't put too much pressure on her to do all the work because she is so young,” Reynolds said. “As a teacher, I do appreciate the slower pace of not having to get out the door, but I definitely feel that my students' learning and mental health suffers with online learning. All the parents are in a different situation, some can be right there with their kids and help and some don’t pay any attention at all.”
Reynolds knows first-hand how stressful it can be worrying about the health and safety of not only yourself but also your students, after her classroom was closed earlier this year following a potential exposure to COVID.
“I showed up to work that day not even knowing my class was online. I felt very out of the loop and was just expected to change everything last minute," she said. "All the teachers in my school feel the same as we don't have enough supply teachers so people miss their planning time (or) are expected to cover for others at the last minute.”
-- With files from Nikki Cole and Maija Hoggett
