The first week of September will witness two million students resuming their education journey after schools were abruptly shut down to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Parents across Ontario have to decide whether to send their children back to class or keep them at home and have the school material delivered online.
The possibility of deciding this came after Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced a back-to-school model with heightened safety measures to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks.
Thunder Bay-Rainy River Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski said the decision that parents have to make, between sending their children back to class or resuming online, is a hard one.
“I think everyone should decide partially based on the risk factors within their own family,” Powlowski said. “Say, you have someone at home who has bad asthma or you have some elderly people staying in your house or elderly parents that are dependent on you visiting them regularly. If you have those kinds of people who are at risk at home with you, then I think the prudent thing would be to hold off sending your kids to school and see what happens.”
Powlowski, who is a medical doctor, said he has six children, with the youngest being about seven weeks old. He said he has not decided yet, but they will either send them back to school or give it two or three weeks before they send them back.
“Giving it two or three weeks is because my parents are in their 80s,” Powlowski said. “I have close contact with them and I don’t want to put them at risk by my kids bringing it back to our household so that would be the big concern with my family. Because otherwise you are letting everyone else take the risk but you don’t want to take the risk yourself.”
Powlowski said the other thing that is going to create havoc is the fact that most young children get an average of 10 to 12 respiratory infections per year.
“Kids all the time in the winter have a cough and a runny nose,” Powlowski said. “So what is going to happen if you have one kid in a class who comes in with a cough and a runny nose? Are you going to then send all the kids home and make them all go for COVID-19 tests?”
Powlowski said even though the risk of children having complications from COVID-19 are quite low, sending the kids back to school increases the risk to older members of society.
“There is some risk to the kids, still the risks are pretty low with that,” Powlowski said. “There are some kids with bad asthma or cystic fibrosis, I think they should not be going to school anyhow given these times. But for an average healthy kid, I think the risks to those kids themselves are really minimal.”
Part of the procedures the ministry put in place is having it mandatory for students from grade 4 to 12 to wear masks.
However, even with the heightened precautions the province claims to have in place, Powlowski said it is inevitable that there is going to be some outbreaks, potentially a lot of outbreaks, with schools having to shut down again.
“I think the provisions that are in place at the moment are reasonable,” Powlowski said. “I think reasonable people can come to different conclusions. I think what Ontario has done is reasonable and we are going to have to see what happens and reevaluate it.”
