The Superintendent of School District 73 says it is in the process of finalizing plans for a partial day return to school for kindergarten to grade five students starting as early as Tuesday, May 19th.

It is part of the province’s restart plan unveiled by the Premier on Wednesday.

Alison Sidow says it is still finalizing how exactly that will work. “It’s not difficult for us now to begin to expand the number of teachers that are in buildings and we are in the process of finalizing plans for a k-5 return to school. A partial day return to school starting as early as May 19th, although we are not able to make any final decision until we hear from our Provincial Health Officer and have the guidelines in place.”

“We won’t be able to serve every student in the class at the same time. So students will be coming back to school but they will be doing it on a schedule. We’re working with our principals today and they will be working with their staff to determine what that looks like.”

Part of the return plan will involve daily screenings to make sure that nobody is coming into the building with any symptoms.

“My understanding is that it would be simply interviewing staff and students who may have some symptoms of a cold or flu. It’ll just be making sure that everybody who needs to be at home is at home and that we don’t have anyone with any symptoms coming into the building.”

Sidow says everyone is relieved to see a bit of a return to normalcy and getting kids back in school will be something to celebrate.

“There has been a significant amount of fear I think across our public around what this means. And so we want to do this in a very gradual and measured way so that we’re responsive and able to respond to any needs that arise or any concerns that arise.”

Sidow says she will have more details on the return to school plan next week.