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Fall restructuring and remote learning ramping up at both boards

'When we restructure, we’re actually looking at bringing class sizes down,' official says; Almost 10,000 public board students have chosen ot learn at home
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While the school year has started, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work happening at both the public and Catholic school boards this week, as both boards are preparing to officially kick off their remote learning options while also preparing for regular fall restructuring.

Catherine McCullough, interim director of education for the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board, said that while their remote learning offerings for both elementary and secondary schools have been working on a soft launch this week, virtual school is officially in session on Sept. 21.

“It’s been fairly stable. There’s been a little bit of back and forth. Some of the families who said they wanted to do remote (learning) – the kids showed up at school,” said McCullough. “There’s also been some (parents) changing their mind to remote.”

“As of now, everything is closed; whatever decision was to be made, had to be made. By Friday of this week, we do what we call a ‘snapshot,’” she said.

According to McCullough, a snapshot, or restructuring, happens every year at school boards, where once students are in school, administrators take a closer look at class sizes and may rearrange some students to create the most efficient configurations of students, space and teacher resources.

However, McCullough says there is more work to do this year due to COVID-19.

“We also have new registrations, so we’re trying to capture that data too. This is why it’s important to get everybody into the schools to look at the actual numbers,” said McCullough, adding that the Catholic board will be restructuring classes on Monday once each school reports their actual final in-class numbers.

“When we restructure, we’re actually looking at bringing class sizes down. That’s our goal,” she said. “We look at having a class with a large number of students, and maybe a class with a small number of students, and figure out, how can we equalize that?”

McCullough said the board will also look at if they’re short teachers in particular schools, how that will also be addressed.

“We want to try to bring some of those larger class sizes down,” she said. “It’s challenging, because it’s not typical due to COVID.”

On Wednesday, some parents of students enrolled in the Learn@Home program being run by the Simcoe County District School Board received an email from schools causing some confusion for local parents, with at least one email stating that when classes have been assigned teachers, parents will be contacted at that point.

“This may not happen until Sept. 21. We do not have a timeline for this,” reads the email.

John Dance, associate director of education for the public board, said that the board still intends to begin their remote learning option -- the Learn@Home program -- on Sept. 21 as previously announced, and nothing has changed in that regard.

“We haven’t changed what we’ve committed to. It might come out in different forms over time. We might have to make alterations, but the program is set to start on the 21st,” he said.

Approximately 7,000 elementary students and 2,600 secondary students are enrolled in the board’s Learn@Home program.

This represents approximately 18% of all SCDSB students.

“We have seen some movement of parents moving toward the Learn@Home option,” said Dance. “Some people have had second thoughts. Not a lot, but some. We had to cap our movement between (the two options) earlier this week so we could build our classes.”

Dance also said reorganization is a normal process at the public board that takes place annually.

“We have not reorganized yet. We stayed the course for the last two weeks,” he said.

Sept. 29 will be reorganization day for in-class students at the public board. During the reorganization process, multiple factors are considered including the school composition, enrolment, class cohorts and collective agreements.

As the staffing process for the Learn@Home program is happening now, Dance said parents can expect to receive information by email by the end of the weekend if they have enrolled their child in the program.

“If not, they should get in touch with their school. For the most part, the teachers who are already there will be their Learn@Home teacher,” he said.


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Jessica Owen

About the Author: Jessica Owen

Jessica Owen is an experienced journalist working for Village Media since 2018, primarily covering Collingwood and education.
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