The Saskatchewan government has pushed the beginning of school back by a week and set money aside for added costs, but some advocates and parents say there still isn't enough time or funding to reassure them.
Premier Scott Moe has allocated $40 million, from an earlier $200 million announcement, for costs associated with reopening K-12 schools during the pandemic, and the start of classes has been pushed back from as early as Sept. 1 to Sept. 8.
Elya Lam, a Saskatoon mom of four who helps run the Keep Saskatchewan Kids Safe social media group, says that while the extra week will be helpful to teachers, she finds it "baffling" the province waited so long to move the start date.
"We've had six months," said Lam. "Why are we just figuring these things out now?"
Lam and fellow advocates have been calling for mandatory masking, increased ventilation, reduced classroom sizes and a testing and tracing system across every school division.
Keep Saskatchewan Kids Safe has set up an online form to make it easy for people to contact Moe and other leaders. She said no one that she knows of from the group has had a response back to their messages, though.
"The role of the government is to listen to the people who elected them and we haven't seen that," Lam said.
"I'm devastated, I'm horrified, that we would not take every possible precaution to keep our kids and our families and our communities safe."
Increased testing will find cases: Shahab
Shawn Davidson, president of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association, said he is quite comfortable with the province's back-to-school plan, and knows it is subject to change if needed.
"I understand the concern out there, but I do also want to assure parents and communities that we're not just doing this willy-nilly," he said.
The association is also working closely with Saskatchewan Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab, he said.
"And if he is comfortable with where we are at, then I'm reassured that we're doing the right things."
On Monday, Dr. Shahab said enhanced testing that will be done on teachers and students means the province will find COVID-19 cases in schools. But the occasional case, or cluster of cases, shouldn't be cause for concern, he said.
"Information is really important to help us further manage the school reopening, but it should not always create concern or panic if there's a test positive," Dr. Shahab said.
Public health will be working with schools on identifying cases and tracing contacts on a day-to-day basis, he said.
In some cases, depending on symptoms and test results, students will have to self-isolate for 14 days, or more if they become very ill.
Extended classes could mean failures: student
Bridget Salamon, who is going into Grade 12 at Saskatoon's Walter Murray Collegiate, said two weeks is enough time for a student's high school career to suffer irreparable damage.
Her school division is moving to a new system using what are called "quints." Each student will take two subjects a day for three hours each. Those classes will run for 37 days, and then new classes will start. That cycle will run five times.
The goal of quints is to lower the number of contacts a student encounters.
But Salamon worries that if a student does become ill and has to miss 14 days — or nearly 40 per cent of two classes — they won't pass.
"You could very well fail two classes just because you had a cough," Salamon said.
Salamon said she is "extremely concerned" about going back to school and wants all precautions taken, but she doesn't think those changes should severely impact education.
She also doesn't think physical distancing is possible for high school students. She has been urging the government, through emails and letters, to mandate masks in schools across the province, so that even if students are close, they're protecting each other.
Menawhile, an online petition calling for "a better back-to-school plan" in Saskatchewan had nearly 20,000 signatures as of Tuesday night.
The petition demands "a back-to-school plan that we can trust to give us a chance at keeping our kids and communities safe and the kids in school this year, without also compromising the need for quality education during a global pandemic."
"Families must not be forced to choose between their health and their education," the petition says.
