Students attending School District No. 46 (SD46) are slated to return to physical schools next month after in-person instruction was suspended in March due to COVID-19.
“We anticipate having kindergarten to Grade 5 students come to school beginning on June 1 on a part-time basis and voluntary basis,” SD46 superintendent Patrick Bocking told Coast Reporter on May 11. Students from Grade 6 to 12 will have access to in-class learning as needed on a part-time basis, he said.
Premier John Horgan released guidelines for phasing schools into normal operations with his “restart plan,” announced last week. There are five stages in the plan for restarting in-school instruction. Stage 1 involves the “new normal” with all students in all grades learning in the classroom, according to the Ministry of Education website. Stage 5 would represent “essentially a full lock-down of the system.” Currently, the province is at Stage 4: only children of essential service workers and students with “complex needs” are attending school.
At SD46, there are 21 students whose parents are essential service workers attending class at two sites.
As well, Bocking said, “across the district all of our schools are welcoming students with vulnerable learning or support needs. Those numbers vary greatly and are changing regularly based on need.”
The province’s goal is to transition from Stage 4 to 3, which would see the expansion of in-school instruction while keeping remote and online learning available, according to the Ministry of Education website.
How that transition looks will largely depend on each individual school district. “Districts are in the best position to determine and plan for their local community needs,” reads the website.
“Some students will have in-class instruction five days a week and others may only be one day a week, supplemented with online learning until the end of June.”
No concrete plans have been announced for SD46 yet.
Bocking acknowledged “many details” still have to be worked out and will involve “lots of consultation” with school principals and other staff. The district is also expecting more refined guidelines from the province. “School practices will look very different from what they were prior to the spring break,” he said.
Another issue that remains unresolved is what to do about graduation ceremonies, prom and “dry grad.”
Normally, proms and dances would be kicking off the second week of May. Student committees and parents take the lead organizing those events. So far, there are no firm plans for alternative events, according to Paul Bishop, director of instruction at SD46.
SD46 oversees all graduation ceremonies, which normally take place at the end of June.
Bishop said he is working with secondary school principals to “make sure that students have the kind of experience they expect after 13 years of schooling.”
The district is “exploring all options,” and preparing for the likely scenario that public gatherings of more than 50 people will still be prohibited. He said it’s “still too soon to tell” whether ceremonies could go virtual.
“It’s an important event so we want to make sure we can do what’s possible and at the same time we want to make sure all the students in the district are recognized through each school, so that we have some consistency for all students and families.”
One thing hasn’t changed – scholarships and bursaries have been confirmed and students have been receiving acceptance letters from post-secondary institutions. “There’s still that anticipation of moving on afterwards, even within this context,” Bishop said.
