Paul Wozney: “Today, just like they have done every day for the past three months, almost 150,000 Nova Scotian children and adults (up to 35 at a time) crowd into small poorly ventilated classrooms where masks are not universally required, which also lack proper handwashing stations. Nowhere else is this tolerated. If you hosted a gathering like this in your home, you’d be fined.”
Questions around the relationship between the spread of Covid and class sizes caused these mathematics professors to run some simulations. The model made a very surprising prediction: as class sizes go up, the negative impacts of COVID-19 go up exponentially faster. The worst scenario, by a wide margin, was the 30:1 ratio in the primary school setting.
Nova Scotia Teachers Union president Paul Wozney writes on the intricacies of reporting on class size caps, and offers suggestions on improving transparency in terms of that important issue. “Now that elected school boards are gone, it’s imperative that parents are armed with the knowledge they need to advocate on behalf of their children. They must have the facts so they can hold the government directly accountable and ensure commitments that impact their children are met,” writes Wozney.