In-person learning will remain suspended at schools across the GTA for the time being.

The Ford government had already announced that students in the five COVID-19 hot spots - Toronto, Peel, York, Windsor-Essex and Hamilton – would be learning from home until at least Feb. 10.

But it had left the door open to schools reopening in other regions with lower levels of COVID-19 transmission, giving Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams until today to make a recommendation.

In a news release issued late Wednesday afternoon, the Ministry of Education confirmed that it will permit schools to resume in-person learning in seven different public health units as of Jan. 25.

In-person learning will, however, remain suspended across the GTA after Williams decided to recommend that the closure of schools in Durham and Halton regions continue “for the time being.” School closures will also be extended in a wide swath of other public health units, including Niagara and Simcoe Muskoka.

Schools in northern Ontario are not affected by the decision, as they were already allowed to resume in-person instruction on Jan. 11.

The public health units where schools will be able to reopen are as follows:

  • Grey Bruce Health Unit
  • Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit
  • Hastings and Prince Edward Counties Health Unit
  • Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Health Unit
  • Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit
  • Peterborough Public Health
  • Renfrew County and District Health Unit

Wednesday’s announcement effectively means that schools will remain closed in the 20 of Ontario’s 34 public health units, including all of the ones located in the GTHA.

The province also says that there are nine school boards where some schools will be closed and some will be open because they span mutiple public health units.

In a statement, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce said that “getting students back into class” remains his government’s top priority and that a number of measures are being implemented in the boards permitted to reopen, including asymptomatic testing.

Lecce, however, did not say when schools in other regions might be allowed to reopen and the release only stated that “the Ministry of Education, in consultation with the Chief Medical Officer of Health, will continue to closely monitor public health trends in these regions.”

More than 7,000 students and staff tested positive

The online learning regime has forced parents to make sometimes uncomfortable and maddening adjustments, balancing work inside or outside the home with the needs of their kids, along with making sure everyone has space and sufficient internet bandwidth to access class.

Throughout the fall term, the subject of transmission of COVID-19 in schools challenged officials, with medical experts and Minister of Education Stephen Lecce saying spread in schools was caused by prevalence of infection in the wider community.

During the term, more than 7,000 students and staff tested positive for the virus and at least one education worker died.

Between Sept. 1 and the end of the term in December, nearly 49 per cent of all schools in Ontario saw at least one confirmed case of COVID-19, according to the Ministry of Education.

In December, health units in Windsor and Toronto began voluntarily testing entire schools full of asymptomatic pupils for the virus and found dozens of positive cases, prompting a rethink about existing safeguards.

Then on Jan. 7 the Ford government announced that all schools across S. Ontario would remain closed until at least Jan. 25.

At the time Williams said that the extended closure was necessary to allow the province to put additional precautions in place.

“We are trying to get the right balance here where we have a deferral of the reopening for two weeks while we get these other things in place because we want the schools to be open and we want them to stay open,” he said at the time. “Our methods that we put in place before in the fall in my mind have to be enhanced especially around areas of surveillance and monitoring and promptness and readiness. These aren’t simple things where you turn a switch on. You have to put a lot of things in place and we are working on that at this time.

Since the summer, the Ford government allocated about $840 million to reduce class sizes, increase ventilation, hire more custodians and set up a network of 600 public health nurses to assist schools.

They also accepted $381 million in help from the federal government and allowed school boards to dip into $500 million in existing reserve funds to help schools prepare for the impact of the virus.