The Superintendent of the Kamloops-Thompson School District says teachers and other school staff have been hard at work to ensure a safe return to school on Monday.

Rhonda Nixon says they are planning for in-person learning, but tells NL News there are contingency plans in place, just in case.

“There may be some students who are not present and who are at home because they aren’t well, and we also may have some staff in the same situation, so we fully expect that that would be scenario two, which is a hybrid scenario,” she said. “This week, there was a lot of staff preparing materials online to be able to plan for that eventuality.”

“If we have a school where there is a lot of absenteeism that we didn’t predict, that is where we might end up into a partial or a full functional school closure, and we will handle that on a case by case basis so we have plans for that. And finally, if there province were to move to online learning, we are prepared for that.”

Nixon says in addition to safety measures that have been in place for months like the use of masks – which will be handed out to students that don’t have any – and daily health checks, there are additional safety measures to keep students and staff safe.

That includes virtual assemblies, staggered break times, and visitor restrictions.

“A functional school closure may result if there are not enough staff to teach one or more classes or a whole school. Staff and student absenteeism will be monitored closely, so if there is a school in this situation, parents will be informed immediately,” Nixon added.

“Children would need to go home, and administrators would then determine which staff could work from home and teach online…with the aim of returning to face-to-face programming as soon as reasonably possible.”

She also noted that contact tracing and public notification of exposures will no longer take place because of the increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant.

“Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 through a rapid test is to self-report the results, self-isolate, and notify close contacts,” Nixon said, noting details on the allocation on rapid tests for the school community is expected from the Ministry of Education next week.

Nixon says while they’ve planned for four scenarios, she’s optimistic that they will not need to move away from the plan for in-person learning.

“Any advice that we’ve been given to us by Interior Health, we’ve followed and every single school has upgraded filters to the industry standard that was prescribed and also flushing routines and we are confident about our ventilation system as well – you raised that – and also our cleaning practices,” Nixon added.

“We had hired additional staff and we maintained cleaning of all surfaces in its full force this year.”

She says the district will deal with any anomalies as and when it arises.

“I think we need to live the week, trust that schools are safe,” Nixon said, adding she wants to reassure staff, students and parents who might be anxious that schools are safe.

“Our Interior Health guidance is exceptional. It has worked for us in the past, so it will work for us now. And we will persist together as partners. I do believe we’ll be in scenario one, and I do believe we’ll be able to stay there.”

“We’re tracking every school, every day. We have an incredibly good department in terms of doing that and giving me a graph, and the charts first thing in the morning,
she added. “We have a whole team here reaching out to schools to ask them ‘how is it going? Is there any anomaly and what can we do to help?’ If there are staff away, we have a very intricate continuity of operations plan.”

You’ll find details about the four scenarios that SD73 has been working on here.

A break down of all safety measures that are in place in schools is below:

Existing safety measures