Toronto school board goes along with Ontario mask rule loosening, asks for time

Students returning from March break will get to choose whether to wear a face mask or not, Ontario’s provincial government said earlier this week, and the Toronto District School Board will comply even as its board of trustees asks for more time.

The board, Canada’s largest with almost a quarter of a million students in 600 schools, told parents on Friday that it would go along with the Ford government’s timeline to lift most public health restrictions put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

“As of March 21, masks will no longer be required to be worn in schools, though they are strongly encouraged,” it said in an email.

The TDSB will also welcome back unvaccinated staff it had kept from working (or required to test regularly if they were retained amid staff shortages), rescinding an order from late last year.

The moves detailed in the note followed a Thursday evening board meeting where trustees voted to write to the education minister, the chief medical officer of health and Toronto Public Health to ask for more time to remove COVID-19 measures.

Students in Ontario are away from school next week and return on March 21. The board said it asked for a response by March 16.

But Premier Doug Ford came back quicker than that, with the Progressive Conservative leader telling a news conference on Friday afternoon that “the chief medical officer of health is the expert” and Education Minister Stephen Lecce issuing a statement around the same time that said boards “are expected to implement this cautious plan.”

Dr. Kieran Moore said on Wednesday that masks will no longer be required in restaurants, retail stores and inside schools from March 21, while critics warned plateauing rather than plummeting indicators suggest a few more weeks of restrictions are warranted.

The move to drop mask mandates is “not supported by science,” the head of the science table advising the government told CBC Radio earlier this week.

Masks still must be worn on public transit and in high-risk settings, including in hospitals and at long-term care facilities, although all mask mandates and all other emergency orders under the Reopening Ontario Act will be lifted as of April 27.

TDSB will try to accommodate those now needing virtual learning

The TDSB said cohorting and distancing — rules which had kept student groups apart in an effort to control the pandemic’s spread — would also be dropped in classrooms and on student transportation.

“Elementary students can play and learn together across cohorts, classes and grades, both indoors and outdoors and during lunch and recess,” it said.

Shared spaces will return to full use and cross-grade programs such as reading buddies will resume, as will assemblies and other in-person events without limitations, the board said.

Coming two years to the day since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the TDSB note acknowledged that the welcome reprieve for all would mean some families will not be able to send their children back to schools following March break.

“The TDSB will consider accommodating requests for short-term remote learning within current teaching capacity in virtual learning, and in alignment with provincial guidance,” it said, linking to remote learning resources.

The Ford government has said the province’s school boards must provide an online option for this 2021-22 school year and the following one, while critics say it has not invested enough to ensure educational recovery and renewal for all.

While the soaring hospitalization rates of December and January’s Omicron surge have subsided, elementary schools house some of society’s least-protected members, with junior kindergarten children ineligible for a vaccine and stubbornly low uptake rates among five to 11-year-olds.

The board said measures that would still be enforced include daily screening before entering a TDSB building, enhanced cleaning, notifying Toronto Public Health if staff and student absences exceed 30 per cent, rapid antigen tests for symptomatic testing and providing medical masks to students and a range of personal protective equipment (PPE) to staff on request.

Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer