Okotoks area school boards are preparing for an abnormal start to the 2020-21 school year.
Both Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools and Foothills School Division are providing families with options for educating at home as well as traditional classroom settings with COVID-19 protocols in place, as regulated by Alberta Health Services.
Parents across the region participated in surveys for each division in the past two weeks in order to gauge which direction parents were leaning with their students’ return.
“It’s an anonymous survey and we didn’t make it binding,” said Scott Morrison, superintendent of CTR Catholic. “It’s just to see where parents are at, but not to officially indicate what they want to do.”
He said of 8,000 parents, less than half had completed the survey by Aug. 20 and of those, about seven per cent were indicating they would enrol in the Centre for Learning at Home (CFL), CTR’s distance learning school. Morrison expects that number to hold as more complete the survey, and perhaps go down.
“The first people to respond to a survey are generally the most engaged or the most concerned,” he said. “The ones who have not responded are probably more comfortable with returning to status quo, so I think seven or eight per cent is our high and if anything that number will drop.”
Those registering at CFL are able to do so online and make a fairly seamless transition from their brick-and-mortar school to online learning, he said. However, there could be a cap coming to the distance learning school for non-CTR families.
Projections for Centre for Learning registrations were 2,500 and are approaching 3,000, said Morrison.
“We are guaranteeing CTR students registration because they are considered resident students,” he said.
In the classroom setting, the first week of school will look a little different this year, he said. All CTR schools are running a staggered entry, with half their students returning to class Aug. 31, the other half having their first day on Sept. 1, and all students in the classroom by Sept. 2.
The first day will be focused largely on new procedures for health and safety and ensuring all students are comfortable with the standards in place, he said.
“Because it’s such a focus on safety, just smaller numbers make it easier to personalize the instructions and ensure they’re understood,” said Morrison.
CTR Catholic is offering its existing families the option to do a trial run in the classroom to test the waters and see whether they want their students back at school or learning from home.
Parents can register their children in their regular school for the first four or five days – even if they’ve already registered for CFL – to see how it feels.
“If they’re not comfortable with re-entry conditions, they’re guaranteed re-entry to the Centre for Learning as soon as they tell us they’re not comfortable,” said Morrison.
In addition, the division is piloting a program in select classrooms, where teachers will livestream their lessons to half their students in-person and the other half learning in real time from home.
It could help some parents who are still anxious about returning to school, and could also help the division prepare in the event there is a second spike in COVID-19 cases or a school outbreak. At this point, availability is being driven by parental demand and teacher buy-in, he said.
“We don’t want to make it mandatory, we want only teachers who are confident in piloting learning in this type of way,” said Morrison. “We’re not going to do it with everybody and do it poorly, we’re going to do it with teachers who are motivated and who have the technical expertise to be able to handle that pilot.”
While not recommended due to disruption in learning, students can transfer back to their schools from Centre for Learning and vice versa, but Morrison suggests families stick it out until after a reporting period or semester break to ease the transition.
“We’re kind of interested to see how our pilot goes, how the beginning of the school year goes,” said Morrison. “There’s some trepidation. We’re being very honest with the parents – there are a lot of growing pains we’ll have to overcome.”
Foothills School Division’s preliminary survey results, from about half of its families, showed fewer registration in the Hub at Home distance learning program than superintendent Chris Fuzessy expected as of Aug. 20.
Parents were given the option of indicating their students would return to the classroom or the Hub at Home.
“Those families who haven’t responded yet, I assume they want to see school-specific plans,” said Fuzessy, noting most schools sent out their re-entry plans on Aug. 21. “I would expect our Hub at Home registrations may spike after people see those school-specific plans and make informed decisions for their family.”
There will also be a staggered entry at FSD schools to kick off the year beginning Aug. 31, though it will look different at each individual school. Regardless, all students will be in the classroom full-time after Labour Day, he said.
Some are talking about having cohorts like Division 1 elementary students in on the first day, then take a day to review how it went before bringing in Division 2 grade levels on Day 3, with another day or two for review before the long weekend, he said. Others are considering taking extra planning days at the beginning or end of the first week, and welcoming students back for a day or two mid-week only prior to Labour Day.
“This is new for all of us – for parents, for teachers, for communities, for school divisions,” said Fuzessy. “We do have those public health mandates and health recommendations we’re planning around, but until we implement some of that we’re not going to know what kinds of adjustments need to be made.”
Changes may be ongoing over the first few weeks of school as all the kinks get ironed out, he said.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, especially with issues like student drop-off and pick-up, because each school and each community are unique. Fuzessy said there could be some trial and error in putting theory to practice, such as how traffic flow works first thing in the morning and the best way to address issues.
Despite it being a different start to the year, he said the division is looking forward to having students back in its buildings and welcoming newcomers to the Hub at Home program.
“School is an important part of community, so we’re looking forward to being back and working with our community when those staggered-entry schedules begin,” said Fuzessy.
Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca
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