‘Hard to untangle that web’: Division explains Yorkton school’s move to online learning

Students at Yorkton Regional High School will be attending a virtual classroom for the next couple of weeks.

Due to a COVID-19 outbreak at the school, the Good Spirit School Division decided to move it to remote learning to help keep people safe.

Director of education Quintin Robertson said division officials were alerted about the first case on Friday and found out about three more over the course of the weekend.

“It just became more and more apparent the web of connection was getting wider and wider and it was getting hard to untangle that web and to figure out who exactly was a close contact,” Robertson said.

He said it was a tough decision to make, and many people — local and provincial health officers, the Ministry of Education, administration at the high school and members of the school division’s board — all came together to make it.

“It’s going to be a fairly big change. Teachers have been preparing for this since March, (when) they had been delivering remote learning (after schools were closed due to COVID-19),” Robertson said. “The difference is now it’s mandatory. Before, students could opt out.

“(Teachers will) need to take attendance, they’ll need to assign marks, they will need to meet the curricular outcomes for each of their courses. Many if not all of our teachers had prepared themselves for that. There will be assignments and activities that they’ll be completing and submitting that way.”

Due to COVID-19, the school division is running a penta system for the year — two classes for 2 1/2 hours a day.

Robertson also said the division will do what it can to ensure everyone can access the learning.

“We will be deploying additional technology as we did in the spring. We have access to 50 remote hotspots and we would have deployed about 800 devices in the spring so we will have those accessible to students if needed,” Robertson said.

He said it was a tough decision to make.

“We knew that there would be opposition on both sides of the decision,” Robertson said. “If we decided not to move to remote learning and did not take the steps that we had, we know that there would be frustration and unhappy individuals. We knew that this (move) would also result in frustration.

“Our model throughout all of this is to be cautions and put student and staff safety first. The only way to ensure student and staff safety with four confirmed cases was to move to full remote learning. Is it early in the year? Yes, it is. I didn’t anticipate it happening this quickly.”

He said the school division was prepared to do something since it had to shut down a school in a communal living area and nearly shut down another one due to a false positive test. He said he could not name what schools these were.

“It’s not ideal. We know that kids need to be in school. They benefit from the social interaction as do the staff,” Robertson said. “Resoundingly, people were excited to be back and we want that excitement to continue. I don’t want to get in the way of that but I also don’t want to put people’s health and safety at risk.”

The current plan is that students will return to the school building on Oct. 19. The school will undergo a deep disinfecting process to ensure it is safe to return to.

“We’re hoping the community will rally around and understand the gravity of the situation,” Robertson said.