2020 will be the year that the provincial department of education will see its inclusion policies challenged in practice by the pandemic. Parents fear that it will not pass the test. Brooklyn Connolly reports.
Media release: The NSGEU stands with the Nova Scotia Teacher’s Union (NSTU) in calling for improved safety in schools, plus a delayed opening, in order to ensure a safe school experience for workers and students in Nova Scotia.
Danny Cavanagh: “We continue to be baffled by the assumption in the reopening plan that all families have the resources to simply “stay the blazes home” when their students exhibit symptoms of COVID-19.”
Press release: NSTU President Paul Wozney says schools are currently in a state of chaos and aren’t ready to welcome students back next week. He says the Regional Centres for Education (RCEs) and the Conseil Scolaire Acadien Provincial (CSAP) are entirely focused on trying to promote the government’s unsafe return to school plan to the public. As a result the basic things that should take place on the ground to prepare schools for learning just aren’t happening.
A press conference by parents and teachers this morning raised questions around the province’s back-to-school plan that, with just 10 days to go, are becoming increasingly urgent.
Language barriers. Slow internet. Students sent home with no work. Stephen Wentzell writes on the Liberal government’s broken promise of ‘no child left behind’ after the schools closed because of the coronavirus.
Enrollment in recently reopened child care centres is often not meeting the threshold necessary for operations to be financially viable. As a result, there are reports of workers being laid off, and within the sector there are grave concerns that some of the centres will not be around come fall. That would be disastrous for an already fragile sector and the working parents who rely on its services.
Letter: I realize that we must strive to get the economy back up and running, but at what expense? Do we risk the lives of the day care workers or others including parents and families for the sake of supposedly getting unemployed mothers /partners back to work.
Lack of masks, together with the use of substitute workers and the absence of paid sick leave were contributing factors in the many coronavirus-related deaths in long term care facilities across the country. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.
We talk with an early childhood educator who is concerned about going back to work maybe as soon as early June. “Right now there’s a lot of talk going into the plan to reopen about PPEs, there’s a lot of talk about ratios. And those are good things that we need to talk about, but I don’t see enough talk about sick time, or wages. And those are two things that we know were part of the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes,” she says.