Complying with new restrictions imposed as a result of Northern Manitoba and the schools in the region being moved to the restricted level of the provincial Pandemic Response System effective Oct. 26 required some Thompson students to move to makeshift classrooms or to entirely different schools.
While four elementary schools – Westwood, Juniper, Burntwood and Wapanohk – were able to ensure two metres of distance between all students and staff without exporting any classes, École Riverside and Deerwood ran out of room.
“At Riverside, even at a metre there were some classrooms that were pretty tight,” School District of Mystery Lake (SDML) co-superintendent Angele Bartlett told trustees at the Oct. 27 board meeting. “There’s not enough space. They’re using the gym at Riverside, they’re using the library. There’s two classrooms in the gym now, there’s a class in the library. The Grade 8 English class had to move with all off their stuff over to R.D. Parker Collegiate and their classroom is set up in the library at R.D. Parker right now. At Deerwood, two classes of Grade 8s were assigned to R.D. Parker and they’re in actually the theatre right now to accommodate those two classes."
Getting the changes implemented with only a couple of days’ notice required extra efforts by a lot of school district employees, Bartlett said.
“When you think of moving desks and all their books and all of that, the maintenance department, everybody, they were like a well-oiled machine. Everybody really stepped up. There’s a lot of changes and people handled them very well so we appreciate that.”
RDPC had room to accommodate the extra students because no more than half of the Grade 9-12 students attend classes in person at any one time, one group on Mondays and Tuesdays and the other on Thursdays and Fridays.
“Rght from September they were able to do the two metres of social distancing so fortunately we did not have to move the high school into an entire remote learning platform because they were already meeting that threshold,” Bartlett said.
Shuffling of staff has also been required as a result of increased restrictions affecting schools.
“[Co-superintendent] Lorie [Henderson] took her entire special services team and deployed them into the schools," Barlett said. “Along with them, we have choir teachers because choir was one of the things in the recommendations for code orange that no longer happen so the choir, junior high band and industrial arts teacher that are traditionally assigned to the high school have all been deployed back down to the elementary schools as well as all resource teachers, any specialist positions, everybody’s kind of all hands on deck and in the classroom.”
Where classes have been split, the teachers they had since the start of the school year are still involved with both groups’ education.
“They’re more like educational teams with, say, the homeroom teacher doing all of the programming and them kind of going back and forth,” said Bartlett. “In some cases, it’s a teacher working with the support of an educational assistant so all hands are in schools right now to try to accommodate this.”
Despite the province moving the region and its schools from the yellow level to orange, the school district hasn’t received any additional homeschooling requests.
“The number of students who the district have received notification on homeschooling at this time remains at 11,” said Henderson. “The number of students who have medical accommodations in the district – we have 10 students, five at the high school and five at the elementary schools.”
The district was already aware of some students’ medical conditions but new ones have to have a doctor’s note to be provided with remote study options.
“We are not at this time providing the remote learning unless it’s exceptional circumstances,” Henderson said. “The only students that are eligible for the remote learning are the students who have been medically accommodated.”
One school has a large number of students who haven’t yet attended classes this school year so two staff members there are providing homework packages as the first step of transitioning them back toward regular attendance.
“When the kids are falling behind, that’s just more of a workload for teachers so we’re providing the packages and we do have two teachers assigned,” Henderson said.
Although orange level restrictions specify that some schools may provide remote learning, Henderson says that it isn’t feasible to do so in Thompson while still having in-person classes.
“It would be really hard for us to provide remote learning without having additional staff and truly there really is no additional staff to be hired,” she said.
Board vice-chairperson Guido Oliveira thanked all school district staff for rising to the challenges this school year has already presented less than two months in.
“Please know that it hasn’t gone unnoticed,” he said. “We appreciate everything everybody has done and we realize how hard everybody is working going into this so, once again, thank you.”
