Return to in-person schooling in doubt as Omicron cases spike across Ontario

Just days before students are set to return to the classroom in Ontario, the province's back-to-school plan is clouded with uncertainty and critics are calling for more details.

Most publicly-funded schools are scheduled to return on Monday, but with a surge in cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 straining public health testing and contact tracing resources, whether students enrolled in in-person programs will return to class is very much in doubt.

On Tuesday, Premier Doug Ford said cabinet ministers will meet soon to make a decision.

"They're going to be coming out. I know the minister [of health] has been sitting down at the table along with the minister of education … and we will be having an announcement in the next couple of days," Ford said. "But we just want to see how things go and obviously speak to the chief medical officer, Dr. [Kieran] Moore."

Waiting for that decision — there are no announcements scheduled for Wednesday from the premier or his top ministers — has some concerned that parents will be left scrambling to prepare for a transition from in-person to virtual instruction.

"It's a problem if schools move to online and it's a problem we don't know," Gabrielle Brankston, a mother of three school-aged children who is also is a PhD candidate in epidemiology at the University of Guelph, said in an interview on CBC's Metro Morning.

"Aside from the fact that my own kids don't want this online learning again, I worry about the equity issues. I worry about the single parent who can't work from home and they have to ... sort out childcare and online learning with really short notice."

Brankston said her kids, aged five, 11 and 13, felt disengaged from online learning when schools closed last year, but she worries about sending her them back with community transmission so high.

She said she would feel more comfortable with smaller class sizes, HEPA filtration inside every classroom, vaccine mandates for students and teachers, better masks provided to all and free rapid tests for every family and education worker who wants them.

Many of those ideas were echoed by opposition leaders on Wednesday, who called for more clarity from the Ford government regarding its back-to-school plan.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said it's "ridiculous" that families still don't know whether classes will resume in a few days and that the government should have used the holiday period to make schools safer with plans for regular testing, better masks and improved ventilation. 

Speaking at a virtual news conference, Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said that the government hasn't taken enough measures to make schools safer after closing them for long periods of time earlier in the pandemic.

"We should not be in a position right now where parents have this much anxiety, where frontline education workers don't know for sure what's happening, where people are so tired, so exhausted and so burned out from Doug Ford being missing in action," Del Duca said.

Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner accused Ford of leaving parents and students "in the dark" about the return to school.