All students in Essex County will move to virtual school Monday morning
Teachers at the Greater Essex County District School Board are ready for a transition to online learning.
With COVID-19 numbers rising in the triple digits daily, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit announced all students in Essex County would move to virtual school Monday morning
Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation District 9 President Erin Roy says her membership is tired, but ready to do what's needed.
"They've done fantastic jobs so far, but just knowing the level of exhaustion that everybody was just crawling to the break anyways, if that's what the community needs then I know our members will step up and do it," she added.
She says teachers and students should make a smooth transition to online learning.
"Even our kids that have been going to school every day, their second period has been online every day since September as well so they're very familiar with the format," she says.
Roy tells AM800 News it's an additional challenge teachers weren't expecting heading into the break.
"I think that everyone was really looking forward to a two week break so they could kind of shut off for a little bit," says Roy. "This throws a little wrench into things but there's five days left and they'll do the best that they can."
Local President of the Elementary Teachers Federation Mario Spagnuolo says the decision is unfortunate, but necessary.
"It's unfortunate that it's come to this because we do believe we could have been more proactive as an education system to keep COVID-19 out of our schools and help with the reduction of community spread," he says.
Spagnuolo says everyone is going to have an added burden when making the switch next week.
"Obviously it's going to throw families for a loop with our own teachers who have families themselves," he says. "But we need to work as a community to support each other through these trying times."
He says staff have a lot of preparations ahead over the next few days.
"Just like we had to be patient in March and work with each other to get through this," he says. "The expectation is that education will continue next week, it will just look a little different.
Virtual class will run through next week before heading into Christmas break.