NOTE: This story was updated May 19.
The New Westminster school district wants to make sure a return to classrooms is handled safely and cautiously.
That was the message from superintendent Karim Hachlaf to trustees at the school board’s May 12 operations committee meeting.
“Some districts are looking to start up as fast as possible,” he said. “We want to be cautious in our approach.”
School districts around the province are now working to set up plans after Premier John Horgan announced a phased return-to-class approach as part of the province’s Restart B.C. plan, which was unveiled May 6.
Hachlaf said the district is working with the teachers’ union on how to carry out that return in a “safe and intentional” way.
The current plan is to have school districts move to Stage 3 – a return to part-time, in-class instruction – by June 1. Hachlaf said the target is 50% in-class instruction for kindergarten to Grade 5 students and a 20% return for grades 6 through 12.
Planning for that return includes getting updated health and safety guidelines from the provincial health officer and ensuring those are implemented in local schools.
“There are going to be some changes to those safety guidelines that we’ll need to adapt to, obviously. It’s not returning back to school as normal,” Hachlaf said.
He pointed out that some of those guidelines will mean fewer students being allowed in classrooms at one time.
“We’re not going to be able to accommodate the same kind of density, and that is why we’re going to a part-time return,” he noted.
Hachlaf stressed no families will be required to send their children back to school buildings.
“Families that want to continue with the remote learning for the rest of the school year will be allowed to do so,” he said.
Trustee Gurveen Dhaliwal questioned whether there is any plan to consolidate schools if, for instance, only a handful of families decided to send their children back for in-person instruction.
But Hachlaf said the district plan, at this point, is to open all schools.
“We want to look at Phase 3 as an opportunity for a phased-in approach for both staff and students as we prepare for a new normal,” he said. “When we even forecast out to September, there’s a need for us to prepare for what the new reality is so that we can accommodate our students and staff safely. … We’re not looking to consolidate; we’re looking to welcome our school communities back to their own schools, with their teachers, and do that in a sensible way that looks at the remaining four weeks of the school year.”
The ultimate goal is to have all students in B.C. back to full, in-class instruction for the start of the new school year in September.
But trustee Anita Ansari raised a note of caution about that idea.
“I know that I’d want to have some sort of trial period to see how we can have our student body in our buildings, because that’s something we haven’t done under pandemic conditions,” she said. “With the odds of a vaccine being available in September not being really great, I think this is a great learning opportunity for us as a district to figure out how to actually manage a smaller phased return, given that we’re going to have to do a larger phased return with likely health restrictions upon us in September.”
School principals have sent out surveys to families asking whether they intend to send students back for in-class instruction in June; exact details of scheduling and what that instruction will look like are still to come.
More details will be coming out over the next couple of weeks, and a more comprehensive plan is expected to be presented at the next school board meeting on May 26.
“We’re definitely excited to be able to increase some face-to-face opportunities for students and staff,” Hachlaf said.
