Elementary and secondary students that attend a school within the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board (WECDSB) will be able to get their personal belongings back by the end of the month.
The board has developed a series of plans that will allow students to retrieve their items left behind when schools closed in mid-March due to COVID-19.
"We left it for each one of the schools to develop their plans as to how people were going to get their items back but of course there are some standards that are going to be maintained throughout the entire process," says Communications Coordinator, Stephen Fields.
He says items will be bagged, labelled and brought to a location at the school where parents can claim them.
"Staff will basically be going into the schools, they will be collecting all the items that were left behind," says Fields. "They'll be bagging them, labelling them and then bringing them to locations at the exterior of their buildings, that will be an opportunity then for parents and students to be able to drop by and get their belongings and get them back."
Fields says he talked to one school principal who believes there are many students who left personal items behind.
"She was estimating that there's probably 80 per cent of the student population at her school who believes that there's still stuff there in the schools," he says. "I suspect there's going to be a lot of items."
Elementary schools will be communicating directly with parents to get descriptions and locations of items that need to be claimed and at the secondary level, Fields says staff will empty the lockers.
Schools will be contacting students and parents with more details about the retrieval process.
Item collection is expected to begin June 9 and run until June 26.