Interview With TVDSB Education Director Mark Fisher

Thursday, 27 August 2020 16:53

TVDSB Education Director Mark Fisher explains why the school board pushed back the start date to September 14th, face coverings being mandatory for all ages and some of the key details in the return to learn plan from the TVDSB.

OXFORD COUNTY - Students in the Thames Valley District School Board will start heading back to class on September 14th, one week later than was originally planned.

Director of Education Mark Fisher says they had a plan that was approved by the Ministry of Education that would have had students start on September 8th and High School students would have 2 courses a day.

"Last Friday we got a call from the Ministry of Education, saying they have new information from the Provincial health tables, stressing the importance of co-horting for secondary school students and limiting the amount of contacts any student would have with other people to under 100 contacts per week. What they were strongly recommending was that we shift our model from 2 courses per day to one course per day."

The TVDSB shifted their entire secondary school model, which meant building 25,000 new time tables for students and then creating 7 new virtual schools for the over 12,000 students who have chosen virtual learning. Fisher says in order for them to do all of these things successfully, they needed to delay the start of school from September 8th to September 14th.

Another big announcement last week was making it mandatory for all students, starting in Junior Kindergarten to wear face coverings. Fisher says they understand this is not going to be enforceable for all students.

"The Provincial mandate that was approved by the Ministry of Education and the Medical Officer of Health for Ontario, directs all students from grades 4-12 to wear masks and if students don't wear masks from 4-12, they can be excluded from school. Our board of trustee's felt strongly that students from Kindergarten to Grade 3 should be encouraged to wear masks as well and we will be providing masks for every student who needs it but I want to be very clear, no student from kindergarten to grade 3 would be excluded from school should they not wear a mask."

Fisher says they have a number of measures in place to protect the students.

"We have extensive hand washing protocols, we have water refilling stations, we are making sure all doors stay open, all lights stay on, we are doing extensive cleaning of the schools every day, particularly the high contact, touch point areas, we have plexiglas put in place. So we are meeting every single requirement that has been recommended by the Ministry of Education and the Health Unit in order to mitigate the risk for the return to school."

If you have chosen the virtual learning options, you will have 300 minutes every day with a teacher and you have opportunities throughout the year to return to class if you choose to do so. In his 25 years as an educator Fisher has never faced a challenge quite like this one. He does encourage parents that are comfortable to send their kids back to school. You can read the TVDSB return to learn plan online here and you can listen to the interview with him below: