Teachers and parents united in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood Wednesday morning to rally for safer schools and smaller class sizes amid a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dozens of parents, children and teachers marched along the streets of Parkdale chanting “What do we want? Safe schools. When do we want them? Now.”
The group says schools in Parkdale have been affected by the latest round of the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) reorganization, resulting in collapsed classes and increased class sizes.
“Cases are rising in the city and the province, number one, has not done enough to fund this and that’s left our board and our schools in a really tough position,” parent Andrea Mcphail says.
Ashleigh Doherty is an ESL teacher at Parkdale Public School and tells CP24 that she attended the rally to support families because they deserve to “feel safe bringing their kids to school.”
“Across the neighbourhood, we’re now seeing classes of larger than 20 and this is at a time when, you know, they’re telling people to only communicate with their family members, to only talk to people within their household and at the same time the province is putting classes of 20-plus together across the neighbourhood,” Doherty says.
Anna Dobie is a parent in the neighbourhood and took her children out of school due to concerns about how the board is handling the pandemic.
She says she wants to see smaller class sizes so her kids can safely physically distance from others.
“I would love to be able to send them back to school and feel safe about it and being that we’re in a high-risk neighbourhood it’s really important that we get all of the schools in this area on that list of high-priority schools,” Dobie says.
Mcphail says the province is not helping school boards enough to create a sufficient plan to combat the virus.
“There’s no plan for a rainy day. How do we keep the kids distant? Cohorting at recess, it’s not clear what’s being done for that either. And some of this is also that the board doesn’t have a plan. They left it up to the individual schools.”
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Education released a statement in response to the protest saying its plan to reopen schools has been “informed by the best medical and scientific minds in the country.”
"We are proud to lead the nation in COVID-19 school reopening funding, an aggressive masking policy for grades 4-12, hiring up to 1300 custodians and $75M in additional cleaning funding, along with the hiring of 625 public health nurses to support student health in our schools,” the statement reads.
“The leading medical advice was clear that we must allow an opportunity for our students to return to school, combined with layers of prevention to maximize health and safety. We have done exactly that.”
The protest comes after the TDSB sent a memo out to parents last week warning that “significant” class adjustments were coming for elementary schools this year due to the pandemic.
“While this is a routine process that happens every school year, the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the creation of the virtual school has resulted in a need for more significant class adjustments and the distribution of teachers between in-person schools and the virtual school,” the TDSB says in the memo issued on Oct. 6.
The changes could include a switch in teachers, reorganization of classes to meet size requirements, more split grade classes, and reassigning some students to different classes.
At the end of September, parents had the opportunity to switch their children between virtual and in-person learning. About 4,500 students wanted to move to virtual learning but the board was struggling to supply enough teachers for remote learning.
The TDSB tried to fill in the online teaching gaps by raising class size caps, combining grades into single classes and assigning English-speaking teachers to French immersion classes.
Despite the changes, the TDSB says it is maintaining its commitment to keep in-person class sizes smaller, especially in high-risk neighbourhoods.
“Balancing the teacher-pupil ratio is absolutely necessary to ensure more equitable access to learning opportunities for all students. The TDSB is making every effort to better balance our schools with as little disruption to your child’s learning as possible,” the memo reads.
