Just one more weekend before students head back to class, but there’s more work to be done than usual.
It’s not just organizing school supplies, and choosing what the kids will wear for the first day back, parents need to read through operational safety plans as well.
Each school in the province has one. In the Anglophone East School District, you’ll find it posted on the website for your child’s school.
Superintendent Gregg Ingersoll is hoping is will provide parents with some of the answers they’ve been looking for, “That operational plan covers everything that the school has been working on to make the school safe, for people to move around inside the school. Everything to do with communication, cleaning, occupational health and safety, everything is in there if parents want to see that,” Ingersoll says.
Ingersoll says anxiety before a new school year, isn’t new, it happens every year. With COVID-19, it has made it that much worse, “I think once everyone gets there, and we get going, it will be better. In a normal school year anxiety happens. This year we have that overlay of everything going on, and COVID-19 hanging over our heads. Once they get back into class and get going, people will start to relax and believe that this is going to work.”
There are ways parents can help as well, by getting the kids back into a routine, and to bed on time, “If we don’t have enough sleep, anxieties are going to go up automatically and we don’t want to have a heightened anxiety because we didn’t get enough sleep in this situation. So those normal things like getting kids into bed, and getting into the routine of school, those are important as well, even though we are taking care of the other stuff too.”
Ingersoll says the District has also been working with an Occupational Safety Coordinator to ensure schools have all of the required signage, along with hand sanitizers and other necessities.
The first day back to school for many students is September 8th.
