'It's just wonderful': Province reopens lodging at Ontario schools for blind, deaf students

Students at Ontario's provincially run schools for deaf and blind children and youth will be able to stay there overnight again starting Sunday, allowing more of them to take part in in-person learning.

The Ministry of Education announced the return to in-person classes and lodging on Friday, after they were shut down amid concerns around the Omicron variant.

The move offers relief for those struggling with online classes and to families who were driving for hours and paying to stay in hotel rooms so their children could learn with the supports they need.

But it comes with increased COVID-19 precautions and a designation as a "high-risk congregate setting."

Any student who tests positive — or is a close contact of a classmate who has — can't attend class for 10 days. A student who tests positive would also have to leave campus within a matter of hours.

Jade Ondrik was just focused on the good news, Friday.

"We get to go back," said the 18-year-old student at W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind in Brantford, Ont.

"We have a couple more precautions in there, but it's going to be pretty much similar to how it was before, which is awesome."

W. Ross Macdonald is a school for blind, low vision and deafblind students with roughly 150 students, more than half of whom relied on its lodging program to stay at the school during the week.

It's part of the Provincial and Demonstration Schools Branch (PDSB), which includes a handful of schools for students who are deaf, blind or who have particular learning disabilities.

Ondrik, who has completed Grade 12 but is back for a final year, said she and other students at W. Ross Macdonald who advocated for lodging to reopen felt their voices had been heard.

"It's just wonderful and I'm so, so thrilled."

She said she's excited to return to her co-op placement at a nearby elementary school and to get back to choir and other extracurricular activities, when those resume as well. 

Being back in a supportive setting, socializing with classmates and learning in-person allows students to "just be a kid," she said, adding she hopes the ministry has taken steps to educate itself on what students with exceptionalities need.