Flin Flon students will be going back to school Sept. 8 and the Flin Flon School Division [FFSD] has released its full back-to-school plan.
In a full 29-page plan published August 17 by the division, the FFSD laid out what classes at École McIsaac School, Ruth Betts Community School, Hapnot Collegiate and Many Faces Education Centre will look like for students, teachers and other staff once classes start.
“We are living an unprecedented time of uncertainty related to a pandemic. Uncertainty generates worry and many questions. The following pages provide up-to-date information related to FFSD's approach to navigating the upcoming school year,” reads the cover letter of the final report.
School board superintendent Tammy Ballantyne led the charge in creating the FFSD plan along with school board trustees and division staff, taking inspiration from a similar plan from the Louis Riel School Division in Winnipeg and tailoring it to fit Flin Flon.
“Most of them are rules that came from the province anyway - there wasn’t a lot of room for negotiation,” Ballantyne said.
The plan, much like that of every other division in Manitoba, is based on the provincial government’s framework for in-class learning, developed in June and July.
The provincial government has planned for three separate scenarios based on however the COVID-19 situation is at any point - scenario one will be more or less normal classes, scenario two would see some modifications and scenario three would be similar to how classes were conducted this spring at the height of the pandemic. As of August 20, the plan is to move into scenario one next month, with in-class learning similar to how it looked on the first day of school last year with some notable tweaks.
Changes
Ballantyne summed up what the first day of school will likely look like next month with one sentence - “Not a lot different, but different.”
Social distancing will be in effect within schools and classrooms. Two metres of social distancing will be available in some classrooms where space allows. Some groups, particularly in elementary classes, will be distanced one metre apart.
“We’re setting up the desks in elementary one metre apart because we’re cohorting them. The high school is looking at two metres apart, because with electives and kids taking different classes, we weren’t able to cohort as easily,” said Ballantyne.
“We’ve visited the school, counted desks, made sure we had adequate spacing, then looked at all the shared spaces such as staff rooms and put a capacity limit on those spaces.”
Other shared areas will have a maximum number of people allowed in the room, while the division’s active classroom furniture and differing learning setups will be removed in favour of traditional chairs and desks. Kids will be educated on handwashing, sanitizing and proper sneezing and coughing etiquette, along with how to use a mask. The FFSD has bought 14 portable handwashing stations for student use - moveable sinks set up in hallways that kids will be able to wash their hands in if sinks are occupied.
Instead of students going from classroom to classroom for different subjects, some teachers will be the ones on the move this year, with classes including English, social studies and others being taught in homeroom. Students will move for phys. Ed, music, shop, home ec and band. Some classes, particularly band and phys. Ed, may be held outside when weather permits.
Students will not be able to use lockers in junior high and high school, needing instead to carry books and items with them and being disallowed from sharing items. Visitors to schools will need to wear masks and must be screened for COVID-19 before entering.
Under the current rules, kids and staff heading into classes on the first day will see some changes, but overall, Ballantyne said they won’t be insurmountable.
“That changes the way we’re doing things, but the classroom will still be a classroom. They’ll still be coming in and be accepted by their teacher and there will be these things in place to make sure we do things in an orderly fashion, that we’re not grouping,” she said.
At lunchtime, parents and students are asked to have kids eat at home whenever possible. If a student has to stay at school, they’ll need to bring a non-microwaveable lunch - shared microwaves will not be used.
Extracurricular activities will be paused during the early days of the school year, with other plans possible as the year progresses. Classes involving students going from one school to another, such as Ruth Betts students travelling by bus to McIsaac for shop class or home ec, will continue, but students will need to wear masks and socially distance on the bus, along with having lower than half the passenger capacity.
Attendance is mandatory for all students without underlying health conditions. If classes shift to remote learning, kids will need to participate each day.
Cohorts
Cohorting students and staff is a key part of the plan. Students will be kept within groups of 75 people or less and will be kept as separate as possible from other cohorts. Times for when each cohort will enter the school, leave for home and go for recess and lunch will be staggered, with times for each cohort left in the hands of school administrators. Class start and finish times also will be staggered to prevent crowding in hallways and at exits and designated entries and exits will be used, along with directional arrows on hallways and capacity numbers on classrooms.
Ballantyne said the cohorts will be based on grade and location within the school, since classes in most grades are often grouped together already in FFSD facilities.
“The schools are pretty much set up like that. At Ruth Betts, they’re set up by area and by grade, so we can keep those as a cohort. McIsaac is similar - they’re set up by grades and similar areas,” she said. The exact makeup of the cohorts will be decided by the schools.
“The administrators are told that this is what they have to look like, so they’ll figure out who belongs to which cohort.”
Under a recent measure from the province, students Grade 4 and up will have to wear a non-medical mask when keeping a two-metre distance proves impossible - kids from Kindergarten-Grade 3 can also use non-medical masks, but are not mandated to.
Kids and staff are advised to bring a mask from home, but the province will provide divisions with limited supplies of disposable masks. Ballantyne said the division will receive a supply of masks for September - while they haven’t made their way up north, they’re expected to by Sept. 1.
“What the province is saying is they are the secondary supplier of masks - parents or staff, I guess, would be the first supplier of PPE,” she said.
“At this point, we will have some available at schools. Right now, the province is providing us with disposable masks. Today they said they had [a] 23 day [supply]. We don’t have them yet, we haven’t received them yet, so I’m not sure of the timeline - we’re still working on that, in terms of the ordering process and the timeline for getting them to us.”
Screening
Staff members will need to self-screen for symptoms every school day and will sign a document each morning saying they’ve done so. All schools will record student and staff attendance and bus use, along with keeping full logs for visitors and part-time employees, to assist in possible contact tracing. Any guests to schools will need to wear masks and sign in.
FFSD substitute teachers will be allowed to work in more than one school. Ballantyne said not restricting subs to work in just one school is due to a small number of available subs.
“We’re limited to how many substitute teachers we have in our division. That’s certainly problematic if that happens in some ways, because meeting needs in classrooms will be difficult already when we have limited numbers of subs,” she said.
Students and staff are asked to not enter schools and self-isolate if they are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, have travelled outside of western Canada and parts of northern Ontario in the past 18 days, are waiting for a COVID-19 test result or have been in close contact with a person confirmed to have tested positive for COVID-19. A chronic cough, sneeze, allergy condition or asthma will not require self-isolation - parents and guardians of children with such issues are asked to let teachers and school staff know.
Each school will have an isolation room set up specifically to hold any student or staff member showing COVID-19 symptoms before they can be taken away from school.
If someone reports that they’ve tested positive for COVID-19, the principal of the school where they were will advise Ballantyne, who will contact public health officials and seek advice, then contact the school and advise the school to follow the officials’ plan.
All school-related out-of-province travel, except to Creighton and Denare Beach, will be suspended for the rest of 2020 for students and staff. Travel plans in 2021 will be assessed later.
Plans for COVID-19 are subject to change due to possible cases, public health orders, equipment availability and other factors.
Buses
Parents are asked to take their kids to school and bring them home when possible. The FFSD will tighten its rules on busing kids, limiting rides only to students who meet existing provincial guidelines - kids from Kindergarten-Grade 6 who live at least 1.6 kilometres away from their school.
Students eligible to ride the bus will have assigned seating and must sit in those spots. Kids from the same household will need to sit together, with kids from the same class and cohort being allowed to sit together as well. All students on the bus will have to sanitize their hands on entry.
