The general feeling among teachers, educational workers, parents and students to the news about remote learning to kick off 2022 is frustration, according to the local president of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario.
Ontario announced that classes would be switching to virtual learning beginning January 5 and lasting until at least January 17 on Monday.
Speaking on AM800's The Morning Drive, Mario Spagnuolo says many in the education sector believe all of this could've been avoided if the province had funded properly and implemented safety measures from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think I'm getting tired of repeating some of the things that we've been asking for. Smaller class sizes, health facilitators, enhanced PPE. Things that you would think would be easy to implement, yet they have not done it. And they're doing this the last minute, so even if they are going to implement it, it's now going to take time which forces the delay."
He says this could've all been avoided with some proactive movement by the province, and that's what frustrates them the most.
When last week's initial decision on back to school was made, Spagnuolo said educators were not consulted on the measures and they weren't on this latest round either.
"If they had consulted prior to Thursday they wouldn't be doing this ping-pong type of approach to decision making which just frustrates people even more," he continued. "I mean teachers, the unions, the school board, directors of education were all watching a press conference at the very same time as everybody else to find out what we're going to be doing in two days."
Spagnuolo says they all want what's best for the children, which is to have them in class learning safely.
"We all have the same goal in mind, we want to be in class, we want children to be in class because we know that's the best place for them to learn. And yet they refuse to work together. If you're not going to work with frontline educators, in the middle of a pandemic probably the worst crisis we'll see in our lifetime, when will we work together as a community if not now?"
The situation surrounding schools and virtual learning will be re-evaluated on January 17.
- with files from AM800's The Morning Drive