Concerns persist for the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation following the release of the government’s COVID-19 Safe Schools Plan for the fall.
It’s an eight-pronged plan that doesn’t include mandatory mask usage and reduced class sizes unless three of four scenarios are activated regionally or provincially based on the advice of Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab.
A release on Tuesday from the federation begins by saying they are “encouraged” that the Ministry of Education is considering masks in schools as a contingency plan. However STF President Patrick Maze said he would have been a lot more relieved if he heard masks were mandatory in all school buildings.
“Just sourcing masks is not good enough,” suggested Maze. “We need to enforce their use and waiting until it gets worse really seems like a strange move.”
He noted that members and parents are already wondering whether or not this plan from the government is enough to protect children and staff during the pandemic.
Maze mentioned that some members have asked about situations of refusing to work, but he said they are not encouraging that at this point.
“We’re saying just give it a bit more time and hopefully government will come around and we’ll be able to know that we’ll be confident enough to get into our schools.”
He added that the frustrating thing for teachers is that they want to be in front of their students, but they want to make sure it’s done as safely as possible by spending more money to bring in PPE and address physical distancing.
When asked about his thoughts on the return of extracurricular activities, Maze believes it should come second to educational needs. He said there will be significant academic gaps in student learning since some students didn’t use emergent online instruction when schools closed in March.
“Some students will effectively have missed three and a half months of the last year of school. So to get them up to speed, there will be lots of pre-teaching to be done in order to pick up where teachers normally do that.”
The STF would like to see the government and school divisions explore all options to avoid the what they call the “Three Cs”: closed spaces, crowded spaces and close contacts in schools.
Related:
