Staff brace for return of school

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This article was published 08/01/2022 (1452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With kindergarten to Grade 12 students heading back to class Monday, Brandon School Division Supt. Mathew Gustafson sent a letter out to parents on Thursday to outline what the next couple weeks will look like.

Following in line with the province’s announcement on Tuesday, most students will spend the first week of this winter semester in remote learning, which is designed to give BSD staff extra time to prepare for the return of in-person classes on Jan. 17.

In Thursday’s letter, Gustafson reminded parents that local schools will reopen in code orange, which means several new safety measures are being put in place to help protect staff and students against the spread of the COVID-19 omicron variant.

These additional measures include: requiring staff and students to wear medical masks, putting restrictions on field trips and assemblies and removing additional furniture to maximize available classroom space.

This is meant to enhance the safety measures that BSD officials already put in place last semester, like establishing a tight cohort system, committing to enhanced ventilation monitoring and handing out rapid antigen tests to every kindergarten to Grade 6 student right before the Christmas break.

“How we’ve approached it in the Brandon School Division is that we’re continually adapting our planning and our actions as the information changes and as we learn more,” Gustafson told the Sun over the phone on Friday.

“So a week gives us a little extra time for that. But it’s not within that week that it stops and it’s not that we waited for this week to start [preparing].”

However, Gustafson also admitted in Thursday’s letter that COVID cases will inevitably increase in BSD schools this upcoming term, given how infectious the omicron variant is.

“We understand that this will cause additional concerns for some families,” Gustafson wrote.

“In these situations, Brandon School Division is exploring a divisional remote learning option for students where in-class learning in our current setting creates additional concerns.”

One element of this new approach to remote learning includes handing out desktop computers — which have already been cleared out of classrooms to provide more learning space — to any student who doesn’t have appropriate remote learning devices at home.

Another concern heading in the next couple weeks is staff shortages, since any BSD teacher who gets infected with COVID will need to isolate for at least five days.

To help fill this potential gap, the division is planning to reassign divisional staff to cover class assignments, which includes recruiting principals and vice-principals to teach.

While this contingency isn’t ideal, Gustafson knows that his staff is capable of taking on alternate roles and responsibilities if the situation calls for it.

This was made evident to him on Dec. 22, 2021, when the division received a major shipment of rapid antigen tests and was tasked with distributing it to every kindergarten to Grade 6 student within the day.

“There were people pitching in from all different buildings, from maintenance to schools to the division staff, to take 24,000 tests and create 4,800 kits. And I think we were able to do that in two and [a] half hours,” Gustafson said on Friday. “And again I would anticipate the same [effort] if we have staff shortages.”

Brandon Teachers’ Association president Cale Dunbar agrees with Gustafson’s assessment, although he also acknowledges how burnt out a lot of educators feel at this stage of the pandemic, which isn’t helped by the fact that the province announced this new “phased-in” return to school on such short notice.

“If a week is what we’ve got, teachers and principals and admin are going to do everything they can to make that happen. They’re going to make sure students and schools are safe,” Dunbar told the Sun on Friday.

“Would we like more time? Absolutely. We can always do a little bit better job if we had a bit more time. But we’ll do a great job of getting schools ready for kids when they do say it’s safe to come back.”

Manitoba has recorded at least 3,740 COVID-19 cases in K-12 schools since the current school year began on Sept. 7, 2021. More than 78 per cent of these cases (2,923) involve students.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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