SD 73 ready for students

The Kamloops-Thompson School District is just days away from welcoming back students on a part-time and voluntary basis. 

Trish Smillie, assistant superintendent of elementary, tells Castanet staff returned to school full-time on May 19, to prepare for a June 1 start date. 

"We're ready. We have been following the health and safety guidelines put out by the Ministry of Education to ensure that we have everything accounted for, for our students," she says. "We’re very excited to have students back. ... We’ve missed them and we’re extremely excited that they’re back in our buildings and we get to spend the last month of school with them."

Once doors open, a number of protocols will be in place. For example, health screening for staff, students and visitors.

'We’ll be working with parents as partners to make sure that any students that are demonstrating any symptoms of a cold, flu or possibly COVID-19, they should remain at home and those students that don’t have symptoms are welcomed to come to school," Smillie explains.

There will also be education around hand washing and respiratory etiquette.

All facilities will be cleaned once a day. Main contact surface areas — like door knobs, bathroom faucets and front desk counters — will be disinfected twice a day.

"We want to limit as well the number of items that come into our school that are not easily cleaned, so students are asked if they have stuffy toys or those types of things to keep those at home," Smillie says.

Maximizing physical distancing for teens and minimizing physical contact for young students is another focus area, she says.

"Physical distancing where possible. We know students are social creatures and that is a really important part of their social development... but we want to ensure that we’re teaching students about physical distancing and we’re creating conditions where they can engage in physical distancing," Smillie says, pointing to reconfigured desks and hangout areas. 

Playgrounds will open on June 1 as well. Although the structures won't be cleaned or disinfected, children will be required to wash their hands before and after they enter the school.

Bus service, meanwhile, will resume under new measures.

The June 1 start date is part of the Ministry of Education's five-stage approach to increase in-class instruction. Next week will be the start of the third stage (the first stage is a full return to classrooms).

Stage 3 means SD 73 will provide in-class learning for children of essential service workers, students with disabilities and priority learners who require additional support, five days a week; voluntary, part-time classroom instruction for Kindergarten to Grade 5 students two days a week, with 50 per cent of students at a time in schools; voluntary, part-time in-class instruction for Grades 6 to 12 students one day per week, with 20 per cent of students at a time in schools; and remote and online learning opportunities for all students each Monday.

Parents, at any time, can arrange to send their child to school in June, Smillie says. They just have to coordinate it with the principal.

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