Bowness High School in Calgary, on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020.Jeff McIntosh/The Globe and Mail
Facing a rapid rise in citywide COVID-19 counts and a dearth of substitute teachers, Alberta’s education department announced late Wednesday that it’s shifting Calgary students in Grades 7 to 12 to at-home learning. There will be no change for students in younger grades.
The shift, which the government said was done at the request of the Calgary Public and the Calgary Catholic school boards, will take effect on Monday for two weeks.
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said the reasons behind the move were “operational,” in that schools in Calgary are facing issues such as chronic substitute-teacher shortages, significant numbers of students and staff in quarantine or isolation, and substantial COVID-19 cases in the community.
Ms. LaGrange maintained that the province’s schools are safe. ”We know that the measures that we’ve put in place with our re-entry plan have worked.”
Despite high per-capita COVID-19 numbers in the pandemic’s third wave, Alberta has put a priority on keeping schools open. Unlike other provinces, it has not, until now, implemented widescale closings. For the most part, grades and classes have gone to remote learning on a case-by-case basis, when clusters of COVID-19 flare up.
Ms. LaGrange said there have been no similar requests from other boards in Alberta. When asked if the shift to online learning in Calgary could last longer, she said the ministry would consider an extension if the boards asked but right now the plan is for students to return to classrooms after two weeks.
Christopher Usih, Calgary Board of Education Chief Superintendent of Schools, said that when students returned to school on April 6, after spring break, school officials noticed an uptick in COVID-19 cases. He said the Calgary public board has been working closely with the Education Ministry – and recently made the request to go to remote learning for Grades 7-12, where the vast majority of COVID-19 cases have been recorded.
The Calgary Catholic School District (CCSD) said it didn’t make the specific request to the province to move to remote learning but chief superintendent Bryan Szumlas said in a statement late Wednesday that the move to online has always been on the table if necessary, and his board backs the decision.
“CCSD is supportive of the province’s move to online for Grades 7-12 in some regions to slow the spread of COVID-19, particularly with the increase in variants recently,” Dr. Szumlas said. “We are in constant dialogue with Alberta Education to determine the best approach, with the safety of staff and students in mind.”
Calgary has among the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the province and the largest number of schools with outbreaks. The provincial government’s website shows 75 schools in the province with 10 cases or more – and 28 of those schools are in Calgary, including 17 high schools.
In Alberta, per capita COVID-19 infections for children aged 10-19 are higher than at any other point during the pandemic, currently second only to people aged 20-29. Daily infections for that age group have almost doubled in the past two weeks.
The opposition NDP’s education critic, Sarah Hoffman, said the switch to online learning is proof that the provincial government failed to give schools the resources they need to keep students and teachers safe.
“Staff shortages, school closures, too many students in isolation, and community spread. All of these problems were foreseeable months ago.”
Meanwhile, the Alberta Teachers’ Association has raised concerns that its members and other education staff haven’t been made a priority for vaccines.
Parent Don Wood learned about the switch to online learning when his son Anderson, a Grade 8 student in Calgary’s public school system, arrived home on Wednesday. The 14-year-old said his teacher broke the news. Mr. Wood said he doesn’t feel like Anderson learned much when classes were online last year, and he’s worried about the impact on his mental health from being out of class yet again.
”He needs to be there to see his friends and teachers and have that coaching and counselling and the social side,” he said. “The mental aspect of it is going to be an absolute nightmare.”
It was just on Monday that the Alberta Premier attributed the growing number of infections in people between the ages of 10 and 19 to “socializing” rather than schooling. Keeping kids out of classrooms, Jason Kenney said, should be a last resort.
“There is a growing body of data that children have been significantly set back in their learning over the past year because of the interruption in classroom instruction. So I’ll say it again: The last thing we should suspend, in my view, is the opportunity for in-classroom instruction.”
Alberta, he said, is in daily contact with school officials and the vast majority want to keep their doors open.
“The amount of in-school transmission is tiny,” Mr. Kenney added.
With reports from Carrie Tait and The Canadian Press
We have a weekly Western Canada newsletter written by our B.C. and Alberta bureau chiefs, providing a comprehensive package of the news you need to know about the region and its place in the issues facing Canada. Sign up today.