In Ontario, there is a rush to get back to school. Bruce Arthur asks, Why the rush?
On Thursday, provincial Education Minister Stephen Lecce delivered yet another version of the school reopening plan. He primarily announced that school boards can now access a total of $500-million in reserve funds to hire extra staff, and to lease space in order to reduce class sizes and ensure social distancing. And there’s a total of $50-million to upgrade HVAC ventilation systems.
Which means three-and-a-half weeks to remake a lot of schools. Lecce first brushed off the idea that school openings could be delayed, though he said he was open to staggered starts over the first week. He said some school boards had already looked at leasing other spaces, and hiring more teachers, or upgrading ventilation systems in buildings that, at last check, were not always easy to upgrade. If you’ve ever seen how long it takes to make a school playground smaller and worse, you might be skeptical.
Evenly applied, $500-million is about $109,000 per each of the 4,600 schools in Ontario, and it will be case by case as to how many teachers, HVAC upgrades, and facility rentals that produces. The Toronto District School Board’s projected cost to create full-time,15-to-20 kid-per-class, enhanced-protocol schools in a prudent manner was at least $20-million.
We know that children do not suffer from COVID as adults do. But we do know they transmit the disease:
The science evolves: children, as it turns out, can get and transmit the virus effectively, even if they mercifully suffer it less, especially under the age of 10. But that means they can infect teachers, staff, parents, caregivers, and their social circles. And yes, Ontario’s community transmission is blessedly low. The point is nobody wants schools, as they have in some jurisdictions, to drive outbreaks.
Meanwhile, parent advocacy groups, Toronto Public Health, Peel Public Health, and the Public Health Agency of Canada suggested smaller class sizes. The Sick Kids reports the province so widely lauded said, “smaller class sizes should be a priority strategy as it will aid physical distancing and reduce potential spread from any index case,” which the province ignored before the CEO of Sick Kids reiterated it.
And Dr. Michael Warner, an infectious disease specialist and Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital says, “The plan cannot end at the doors of the school. It has to make sure that when people leave the school, communities are protected from the school.”
So why not take the time and money to do it right?
Image: forbes.com
