Students and families in Ontario now know that our publicly funded schools will remain closed until at least September. We can appreciate where there are many details to consider before any return to classrooms can be done safely. One detail that we can all agree upon is that health and safety, cleanliness, and hand-washing standards must be developed in any return to school plans. In former Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Opinion piece in the May 10, 2020 Toronto Star entitled, “We need a back-so-school plan“, she proposes any prudent plan would include increased cleaning regimes in schools, which would require increased custodial staff and may require training on deep cleaning techniques.

With this in mind, Fix Our Schools sees caretakers as more important than ever before in our publicly funded school system. We also see the implementation of cleaning, health, and safety standards in our schools as being more important than ever before. We must come together to determine the new standards and protocols that will enable a safe return to school for both students and adults alike. And we must also ensure that we fund an adequate number of fully-trained caretakers to be able to reasonably uphold these standards and conduct these new protocols. For instance, our campaign has frequently heard from parents with concerns over lack of hand soap and paper towels in school washrooms because their local school’s caretaking staff was stretched too thin.

The Fix Our Schools campaign has always appreciated the education workers who often go unrecognized in delivering quality education to our children such as caretakers, office staff, education assistants, and lunchroom supervisors. In fact, we’ve often scratched our heads as our provincial government consistently seemed to undermine their efforts to keep our children’s school safe and clean, as they cut provincial funding. We trust this time has passed and that our provincial government will move forward in a manner that acknowledges and respects the many ways education workers ensure our children’s schools safe, healthy, and well-maintained.

In Ontario’s publicly funded education system, students, teachers and families began “at-home learning” on Monday, April 6th. Behind the scenes, School Boards, the Ministry of Education, Principals, Vice-Principals, and Teachers had been preparing for this model of learning for several weeks prior to the launch on April 6th.

A lot of people in many different roles within the publicly funded education system have come together to make at-home learning possible. This commitment, creativity, and collaboration is ensuring that Ontario students can continue with their learning and, perhaps even more importantly, can continue with some regular rhythm and routine in their days – even while actual school buildings are closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

To everyone who has been a part of the massive effort to transition our public education system to “at-home learning” for now, Fix Our Schools extends a sincere thank you! To the parents who are supporting their at-home learners – be kind to yourselves! If everything isn’t quite going perfectly each day, you may take solace in some of the points raised in a recent Globe & Mail article entitled, “How much should parents be sweating homeschooling?“.  And some of you may be keen to see how each province in Canada is addressing education during this unusual time in history, in which case you may like to review the latest People for Education’s hot-off-the-press Canada-wide Education during COVID-19 Tracker.

To the caretakers who continue to work in our schools to deep clean and conduct routine maintenance while students are not present – thanks to all of you as well! We know that all students, parents, teachers, and education workers are missing those school buildings right now and the sense of community that they bring. Absence does, indeed, make the heart grow fonder! We know that people are optimistically looking forward to a day in the not-too-distant future when they can once again congregate in schools – so thank you to everyone who is working to take care of these critical public buildings while they are closed to students and teachers at the moment.