Children head back to school in western Canada as others resume remote learning

It’s back to school Monday for more than a million Canadian children after a lengthy holiday break brought on by the raging Omicron variant, but less than half of the country will be sitting in classrooms.

The three western provinces and Yukon will see students returning to in-person classes, while Manitoba and further east will be staying home and learning online. The Northwest Territories is turning to remote learning, but Nunavut is planning a mix of remote and in person.

The return to in-person learning is bringing are mixed emotions for staff and students heading back to class.

“We want it so bad, but we want it to be safe,” Nadine Riopel, a mother in Edmonton, told CTV News. “I just so wish that more had been done to make the school environment safer and reduce community transmission.”

Her son Sam is returning to school. Being in class is better for his mental health and education, Riopel said, but she wants the government to do more to protect students and staff.

She said she wished there were smaller classes and wishes the provincial government could have come up with “creative solutions.”

“There’s a community centre across the street from my kids’ school that sits empty,” she said. “Why would we not commandeer some of those spaces for lunches and have smaller groups?”

The Alberta Teachers’ Association, which represents 46,000 Alberta teachers, said staff shortages will be the next hurdle and may force school closures.

The province has promised medical-grade masks and rapid tests that have yet to arrive.

“We’re starting school tomorrow without the very things that they promised would be in place that help protect as tools for teachers and students, and it’s extremely frustrating,” Jason Schilling, president of Alberta Teachers’ Association, told CTV News.

He warned that substitute teacher shortages could be seen across Alberta and across Canada as a whole.

“That’s one of the concerns of both schools potentially closing is that operationally, they won’t be able to do the things that schools need to do because they just won’t have the staff in the building.”

In B.C., more than 3,000 have signed a petition calling on the British Columbia Institute of Technology to delay the return to campus and in-person learning.

“Sending us all back in person with no more protocols and things like that does feel really unsafe for us,” Hailey Schoenhials, a student at BCIT, told CTV News.

B.C. has introduced new protocols for public schools, but high levels of community spread have some parents keeping kids at home.

“Anyone who sends their kid to school in these first few days of next week is basically saying: ‘I agree to be one of the stats that leads to the functional closure,’” Mollie Kaye, a parent in Victoria, B.C., said of the schools reopening.

“I really predict there will be functional closures in most schools by the end of the week anyway, and that’s why I can’t understand they would even attempt this.”

Those east of Manitoba are facing a different challenge: the realities of remote learning.

“I really don’t like the fact that we have to stay home, because online learning can be frustrating at times,” one Grade 3 student in the Greater Toronto Area told CTV News.

It’s a difficult start to the new year for the thousands of students studying at home.

“We say that children are resilient,” Roxanne Francis, an Ontario social worker and psychotherapist, told CTV News. “[But] if they don’t have the consistency that provides them structure, they don’t know what’s coming next and that can really heighten the anxieties that we’re seeing.”

Most provinces have set Jan. 17 as a benchmark for return to school, but if Omicron doesn’t reach its peak soon, many fear online learning will be extended.

With files from Alexandra Mae Jones