Local parent pens open letter to Minister of Education

Classes will resume in Stage 2, full-time in-class. With that, some safety measures are said to be in place. However, little communication has been provided to parents at this point regarding possible alternatives, if any at all.

Over $37 million of the $45.6 issued to help reopen schools is marked for cleaning and hygiene. And schools are likely to try other things as well.

Dunn states that not all families are in the position to allow their children back into a classroom environment full-time. She says there’s a whole other element to the situation that hasn’t been discussed by the government on job security.

With operations being curtailed for many in Northern BC back in the spring due to the pandemic, as well as business closures, parents were forced to burn through their time off in some cases in order with nothing left.

“Now we’re in a situation where we’re moving into a season already that’s notorious for cold and flu, plus a pandemic on top of it, and we’re being asked to adapt as the situation evolves.”

She says that’s going to be challenging for parents as they can’t ensure they’ll be able to keep their employment and also be home with their children for an unsuspected amount of time in the event that their child is sent home due to school mandates associated with the pandemic.

She says distributed learning should be expanded by the government to enable an opt-in alternative to classroom instruction for the coming school year that does not result in a student losing their place within their catchment. She believes that an investment into a single distributed learning platform would ensure all students in the same grade across the province receive the same curriculum and will remain on pace with their in-class counterparts, even though they are learning from home.

“If there are children who perform well in an independent setting and their families are equipped to nurture this kind of learning, why would we force all students back into the classroom immediately after a summer of relaxed restrictions that is already resulting in increased confirmed COVID-19 cases? The people of this province should be offered options that reduce the size of these so-called ‘learning groups’ to the maximum extent possible so as to continue limiting transmission as we encounter inevitable outbreaks.”

While Minister Fleming has yet to respond to Dunn’s letter, she is certain that allowing expansion to distributed learning would allow for greater flexibility in managing children’s education around parent’s own work schedule should children have to stay home for extended periods throughout the year.

Final details of how local school districts will go about their restart plan will be provided to the ministry and posted online by the districts on Aug. 26, 2020.

Find Dr. Elizabeth Dunn’s full open letter to Minister of Education Rob Fleming below:

Open Letter to the Minister of Education, Mr. Rob Fleming

Re: K-12 Restart Plan 2020

Mr. Fleming, on July 29th, 2020, residents of the province of British Columbia eagerly awaited your K-12 education restart plan. Understandably, we have many questions that need to be adequately addressed in order for each family to best prepare for the coming school year. Instead, you delivered a mandate with no clear plan for execution, no contingency plans for the next waves of COVID-19, and no alternative to a full return to the classroom. The people of this province have made tremendous sacrifices and displayed incredible flexibility over the past five months to ensure COVID-19 transmission within this province remains low as we await an effective vaccine. We now ask you to extend that same flexibility to us by offering both in-class and home-based education options for the 2020/2021 K-12 school year to best allow each family to plan around their specific needs.

While we recognize in-class instruction is necessary and/or advantageous for some children, many children in fact thrived on their own at home throughout the remote learning portion of the 2019/2020 school year. If there are children who perform well in an independent setting and their families are equipped to nurture this kind of learning, why would we force all students back into the classroom immediately after a summer of relaxed restrictions that is already resulting in increased confirmed COVID-19 cases? The people of this province should be offered options that reduce the size of these so called ‘learning groups’ to the maximum extent possible so as to continue limiting transmission as we encounter inevitable outbreaks.

With distributed learning programs, such as EBUS, already in place, the BC government should expand infrastructure to enable an opt-in alternative to classroom instruction for the coming school year that does not result in a student losing their place within their catchment. Investment into a single distributed learning platform would ensure all students in the same grade across the province receive the same curriculum and will remain on pace with their in-class counter-parts, even though they are learning from home. Parents would then have greater flexibility in managing their children’s education around their own work schedule should children have to stay home for extended periods throughout the year, and at the same time, these families would be able to continue to maintain smaller social bubbles. Distributed learning for children who require before and/or after school care also reduces exposure within the family daycare setting, which is consistent with the desire of many childcare providers to maintain reduced social bubbles at their workplaces, and who are willing to provide supervision of distributed learners throughout the day in order to maintain reduced social bubbles.

With fewer children on site, children and school staff in the classroom will become entangled in smaller social networks, creating a safer work and learning environment for those who find themselves in these close quarters. Unlike what we experienced during the final third of the previous school year, teachers would not be responsible for both in-class and home-based instruction. Surveying parents right now would allow the province to determine how many children are expected in the classroom and how many will remain at home, allowing each school district time to re-allocate teaching resources to best meet demand for each learning mode. Teachers remaining in the classroom would be able to fully devote their attention to children in their care while teachers who have requested or been reassigned to distributed learning would be responsible only for providing instruction/feedback to distributed learners.

Mr. Fleming, it is important to recognize the situation now is very different compared to the situation in June when students first returned to the classroom. In June, families were still very much in a state of isolation. When schools re-opened, only about one-third of the student population returned to the classroom and the weather was favourable, which allowed these students to spend much of their time outside. The June ‘return-to-the-classroom experiment’ was timely and clearly designed to succeed. In contrast, a full return to school in September will result in three times as many children in the classroom at a time of year that will become increasingly less accommodating to outdoor activities and is already notorious for cold and flu outbreaks. Given the vastly different conditions we are about to encounter, it would be irresponsible to expect the same outcome with the September start that we saw in June. Please work with the people of this province to offer alternatives alongside a return to the classroom that will best suit the needs of families and will respect the concerns expressed by those who will have to work under the conditions you are imposing.

by Ethan Ready

Local parent pens open letter to Minister of Education

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