STEPHEN RICCIO
PONTIAC Sept. 30, 2020
With the Outaouais region entering the orange level warning for COVID-19 precautions and schools temporarily closing in other areas of the province due to positive test results, the Western Quebec School Board (WQSB) is prepared to transition to full-time online learning if need be.
WQSB Director General Mike Dubeau said the school board had to . . .
submit a ‘re-confinement’ plan to the Ministry of Education on Sept. 15. With the region now at the second-highest warning level, classes could potentially move online.
“If it went to red, we could be looking at closing schools,” he explained. “But the ministry made it quite clear that is going to be a last resort.”
Dubeau said that things have been going smoothly in the several weeks since students returned to class, with the occasional student being sent home with COVID-19 related symptoms but no staff or students testing positive for the virus yet.
“We’ve certainly sent students home who do have symptoms during the day, so we’re being very vigilant on that front for sure,” he said.
In regard to the region going from yellow to orange on Sept. 22, Dubeau said that the school board had already been operating as if it were at orange.
“We are operating very conservatively,” he said. “The ministry came out on Sept. 14 with some guidelines to open up extracurricular activities to more than one cohort [of students] and to allow more than one cohort, especially in the option courses in grade 10 and 11, to mingle.
“We decided as a management team that we would maintain the strict one cohort rule and not to expand extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities could occur but only in the same cohort.”
He added that the one cohort stance is a recommendation, so therefore schools could opt to expand activities corresponding to ministry guidelines if they wish.
“If there’s a group that want to go after school and do some extracurricular activities, as long as they’re in the same cohort then that would be the expectation,” he said. “But if they were to mix cohorts that would be against the recommendation.”
Dubeau said that one area where he has not heard any concerns is surrounding PPE issues on school busses.
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