(file photo/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

Back to School

Increased cleaning among numerous measures for safe return to school in NESD

Sep 3, 2020 | 5:00 PM

School is back in session for most Saskatchewan kids on Tuesday, Sept. 8 and plenty of eyes will be on a safe return to school amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Government of Saskatchewan, as well as the province’s school divisions have come out with a Return to School plan that includes a number of precautions. Some of those measures include mask usage for Grades 4 through 12, as well as staff, staggered starts and recesses, and cohorts. However, there are lots of questions when it comes to cohorts and social distancing.

“Unfortunately in classrooms, we’re going to have students closer than two metres, so we’re going to want them to use masks to mitigate against the spread in classrooms,” North East School Division (NESD) Director of Education Don Rempel said. “But in school we’re going to try and keep our cohorts of students, or groups of students separate throughout the day, including recess time.”

Students have also been asked to be dropped off by parents if possible. Children going into kindergarten will be doing a staggered start as well with some beginning school on the first day, and some on Wednesday.

Cleaning and disinfecting are another major piece of the puzzle when it comes to mitigating the spread of the virus. Rempel told northeastNOW that there will be a deep clean every day in their schools, and they’ve also tried to cut down on high touch and hard to clean areas. Things like couches in classrooms have been taken out.

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“We’ve also increased our allocation of caretaking staff, so that there will be caretakers in all of our schools throughout the school day,” Rempel said. “So that if a space needs to be cleaned between classes or when students move between spaces that we will have a caretaker on site to enhance cleaning.”

He added they expect most of their students to return to school, but there are a number of students whose parents have elected to teach remotely. Rempel said some are immune compromised, or have just decided that they feel safer doing that.

Even with a number of precautions and new measures in place, Rempel said he is confident school can return.

“If we put in the safety measures as outlined in our safe school return plan,” he said. “We are confident that we will have a safe and happy return to in person learning, which is what everybody is striving for.”

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6