TORONTO – In exactly two months, the new school year will begin, and in Ontario the plan for re-entry is still a huge question mark. In recent months, the provincial government and in particular the Public Education Minister Stephen Lecce have put aside all the problems created by the Covid-19 pandemic in the school sector to devote themselves to something else. Schools have been closed since the Spring Break in April, and since then all Ontario students have only been offered online learning. Ontario is the only jurisdiction in North America to have concluded this academic year with all schools closed. The government’s approach, which has been challenged by many quarters, has eventually eliminated the root problem: is there a risk of contagion in schools? Then let’s close them. A strategy that can be supported in the short term, to deal with an immediate emergency, to temporarily buffer the crisis situation. But this anomalous solution has become the normality.
Now, to make the idea of the indefinite stop of classroom lessons less unacceptable, a hypothesis was presented that would then quickly founder, having turned out to be a simple and pure illusion: with the schools closed – this was the thesis – the minister and the various provincial supervisors will be able to devote time, resources, energy and staff to the development of an articulated plan for safe return to the classroom in September. Three months have passed and the government has not been able to give birth to anything. Lecce simply announced in recent weeks that the government would invest $1.6 billion, without going into detail.
So many question marks remain that revolve around returning to school: guidelines, safety protocols, tracking of infections, vaccination node for children and teachers, maximum number of students per class, transition for individual students from classroom lessons to distance learning and vice versa. In short, if we exclude the vaccination campaign that concerns children from 12 to 17 years old, these are all issues that were to be addressed a year ago.
Although institutions have been closed for very long periods throughout the academic year, there have been as many as 15,292 cases of positivity in Ontario schools, according to numbers provided by the provincial government itself. In essence, the plans activated by the School Boards and the government have been ineffective.
In Europe at the moment, with covid cases falling despite the threat posed by the Delta variant, a fruitful debate is already underway between the scientific community and experts in the school sector to ensure a safe return from September. In Italy, the Technical And Scientific Committee is already lowering its guidelines, building on last year’s experience – including mistakes.
Here in Ontario, on the contrary, our government has so far decided to ignore the problem. This will be discussed again in August, when there will be a few weeks to go before the start of the new academic year. The parents of the students prepare for another year of passion.
