Like many parents, Sara Budd is at the end of her rope when it comes to her children's education during COVID-19.
The Thornton mom has three children who attend a Catholic elementary school in Barrie. Her oldest is in Grade 6, her middle child is in Grade 5, and her youngest is in senior kindergarten.
Budd made the decision to have her kids participate in paper-based remote learning back in August as she lives in a more rural area. Her home internet is spotty at best and she wasn’t comfortable sending her children back to class in-person yet. As she and her husband both are able to work from home, they thought they could work with their kids to have a positive at-home learning experience.
However, her children's experiences have fallen short of her expectations.
“My two children who are doing the remote paper-based [option] did not get a teacher until after Thanksgiving,” Budd said. “My children went without any support, and I feel they’re still going without much support."
“This isn’t about the teachers and the principal. It’s about the disorganization at the board level. They’re not prepared and the communication is fractured and changes from day-to-day,” she added.
Budd shared with Village Media her email correspondence with the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board’s superintendent of elementary education, Lonnie Bolton, dating back to the beginning of August.
While the emails start with questions and concerns about the board’s plans prior to Budd making a decision for at-home, paper-based learning, the conversation between Budd and Bolton changes as the deadline to make a decision comes and goes, and the estimated start date for her children of Sept. 14 also comes and goes.
'There's a huge gap'
On Oct. 13, Budd was finally told who two of her children's teachers would be.
Last week, Budd was notified that Senior Kindergarten students, including her youngest, would not be doing paper-based learning despite having chosen it in August. In an email from Simcoe Muskoka Catholic Virtual School elementary principal Mauro Porco, the board outlined the reasons for this decision.
“For those families who have chosen ‘correspondence in print’ or ‘paper packages’ as their preferred mode of learning, please appreciate that Kindergarten is a play-based program designed to give your child a strong foundation in development of faith, as well as social, emotional, physical and cognitive development,” he wrote.
Porco writes that in order for kindergarten students to receive a report card, parents will now have to provide evidence of learning through pictures and videos, with written short descriptions of what their children are doing well and where they struggle.
Parents are also asked to provide samples of writing and drawing and are responsible to make arrangements with educators to submit evidence of learning.
“I’m doing it, but I’ve augmented and enhanced it because it’s not enough, at all,” said Budd, adding paper-based learning "is just a bunch of worksheets; there’s no lesson or direction. If [a student] were in class, there would be a lesson associated with the worksheets. There could be a recorded video, something on YouTube... but there’s nothing.
“There’s a huge gap. It leaves us who have chosen paper-based learning to make it up as we go and figure it out,” she added.
Budd has hired a tutor to help, at her own cost. Overall, she’s disappointed that the board seems unprepared, despite having had months to make plans.
“They promised one method, and now, in mid-October, they’re changing it all up. I understand COVID-19 is unpredictable, but the school boards knew this was coming for a long time and they could have been preparing but it just doesn’t seem like they were.
“It’s unacceptable. I reached out to my trustee, and she offered absolutely no help,” said Budd. “I’m at my wit’s end.”
Budd’s oldest daughter is now doing online learning through the virtual school – with the assistance of an internet hot spot sent by the school board – but Budd says she can see the impact all the screen time is having on her child’s mental health.
“She is exhausted at the end of the day after spending all day on the computer. It’s extremely isolating. Her teacher is doing a fabulous job, and she’s loving her teacher, but it’s mentally taxing,” she said. “For any learner to be in front of a computer for 300 minutes a day – they are giving them breaks, but it’s just too much.”
For her other two children, it hasn’t been as successful.
“For my younger kids, there’s no way they would be able to do it unassisted. It means (parents) have to sit with them for their entire school day,” she said. “Essentially parents have been abandoned who chose remote. I actually feel like we’re being punished a little bit.”
Compounding her family’s struggle is the fact that one of her children also has a disability, and has an Individual Education Plan (IEP) with the board.
“To date, that disability hasn’t been accommodated by the school board,” said Budd. “There’s been no support put in place. I have been in constant contact with the Catholic board and it’s been constant excuses.
“It’s the board’s job to ensure that learners are engaged but also that what they’re offering is inclusive and right now, I don’t feel like it’s inclusive,” she added.
'My heart breaks for those families,' says board official
Kim Weishar, superintendent of elementary education with Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board, says her hope is no student is left behind due to necessary COVID-19 protocols.
“My heart is always with students and how they’re being impacted by whatever is happening with schools and communities. We want to do everything we can to support every child and I do worry about those children who feel left behind or feel they don’t have a connection with their classroom or teacher,” said Weishar.
“My heart breaks for those families who feel we’ve abandoned them because that’s not our intent. We want to make sure every child feels connected and that they belong,” she said.
Weishar says back-to-school has been difficult all around, including for paper-based learning.
“Paper-based learning isn’t ideal for children, especially young children. I think parents maybe have an idea in their head that it will be more like correspondence packages. That maybe works for older students, but even for older students these days it is not the preferred mode for curriculum delivery,” she said.
When asked why the board offered paper-based learning back in August as an option if it isn’t seen as a preferred mode of curriculum delivery, Weishar said the board is trying to work with families to find learning models that work best for them, and didn’t want to take options off the table.
“Back in August, we really had no idea what this was supposed to look like because we’re building it as we go, as is happening across the province, country and world,” said Weishar. “I can certainly understand parents’ concerns. It’s taken us time to end up in a place where we feel we’re able to deliver content that is effective for children.”
Weishar says staffing has also been a problem and still isn’t “stable.”
She said the board has looked at hiring teachers specifically to assist with paper-based learning, going so far as to post jobs. However, she said the board was unable to hire for them.
“There just aren’t the teachers out there. Staffing has made it difficult to manage some of these pieces,” she said.
Compounding the issue is the board is looking at further classroom restructuring beyond the restructuring that took place in September. Weishar says this is due to parents deciding to pull their kids from in-class to move them to remote learning and vice versa.
Hundreds of families inquire about switching
As of this week, Weishar says more than 600 families in the Catholic board alone have inquired about switching, with about 65 per cent of families wanting to switch from in-person to remote, and about 35 per cent wanting to switch from remote to in-person.
“That causes a significant ripple in our schools. We had one case of COVID confirmed at one of our schools and we had 27 applications to switch to remote from that school. It’s significant. Being able to accommodate those changes that are coming in pretty much daily has been, honestly, next to impossible,” she said.
“We totally understand where parents are coming from," Weishar added. "It’s been difficult, but we’re all in this together.”
Weishar says accommodating students with disabilities who have opted for remote learning has also been a big concern for the school board.
She explains that IEPs are part of student records that are housed at their home schools. As remote learning has seen students from a variety of schools attending one virtual class, hooking individuals up with educational assistants and getting them to the right classrooms has been difficult from a logistical standpoint.
“We’ve done what we can to ensure we’re connecting with special education resource teachers, and connecting with parents as well around the needs of their children,” she said. “We’re struggling and finding ways to improve communication so we can make sure we’re supporting the children.”
Weishar says there were no best practices when the board sought to create a back-to-school plan, so while hindsight may be 20/20, it wasn’t easy to come up with those plans in the first place.
“We’re writing the book,” said Weishar. “We’re learning as we go along. We’ve asked our parents and our school communities for a lot. It’s been a rough go and it doesn’t seem we’re slowing down anytime soon with the numbers of new COVID cases.”
'There’s no excuse for the chaos that still exists'
Meanwhile, Budd has contacted Education Minister Stephen Lecce and Premier Doug Ford about her concerns. She said she plans to file a formal complaint with the province.
“I understand we chose remote learning. I’m trying to be supportive, but at the same time, there’s no excuse at the board level for them to not have contingency plans. The second wave is here and we were warned it would come, but they don’t seem prepared.
“Education is a fundamental right in this country and I personally don’t feel my children have been supported appropriately. You can only use the excuse, ‘COVID has thrown a wrench in our plans’ so many times,” she said.
“We’re approaching November now. There’s no excuse for the chaos that still exists,” said Budd.
