Students will return to class in September, but New Brunswick’s education minister says if we start to see more COVID-19 cases, we have to be ready to close things down again.
Dominic Cardy says being proactive and closing down schools early allowed them to focus on ensuring students are able to adapt in September.
“This is going to be a multi-year fight against this virus. Because we had that clarity and that early decision, we’re able to focus all of our efforts in getting ready for September, making sure we’ve got every student in the province who can get access to the right levels of technology, to be able to access online learning and make sure it is quality.”
Cardy says they are working with experts inside the province, along with Public Health and others around the world, and trying to figure out how we can do that safely.
“We’ve heard everything from having temperature checks at the doors to the schools, having the same sort of one-way corridors that we are seeing in a lot of retails outlets, and there are discussions around class sizes.”
He adds they are currently working on a plan, and it will be shared with the public once they have it in place.
“We are going to have to be ready to switch from in-person to online learning in a matter of days. and I hope we don’t have to do that. But we are likely to see more outbreaks, we are likely to see more cases and we are likely to see deaths. As education minister, it is my job to ensure it doesn’t have too negative of an effect on our students,” Cardy says.
He adds the fact the New Brunswick has been able to able to push the virus out to this point, is a huge achievement.
“I liken it to a medieval siege, that we had the enemy inside the walls, but we managed to push it back out, but that doesn’t mean the enemy is gone. The fact that NB, while sharing a border with two other province experiencing serious outbreaks and the United Stares with the chaos going on there, the fact that we were able to push the virus back out, is a huge achievement. We have to be ready to maintain that kind of vigilance over the course of the next couple of years until we have that vaccine that we are going to need to move past this pandemic,” Cardy adds.
He says he hasn’t received too many complaints about the curriculum currently being offered to students.
“People have been pretty pleased with the way things have been going. Some have said there should be more materials, some feel there should be less. This material for this term, was just a stop-gap so there wasn’t a full interruption in their learning. In September it will a very different beast.”
