The undersigned represent concerned parents of children attending Ontario public school boards.  We are writing to you with our thoughts regarding sending our children back to school during the COVID-19 epidemic.  

The Ontario Ministry has advised that the current public health circumstances related to COVID-19 will require Ontario school boards to prepare for a range of delivery circumstances for the 2020-21 school year.

In light of the continuing uncertainty about perceived public health risks, we understand that school boards will be asked to prepare for:
1) normal school day routine with enhanced public health protocols
modified school day routine based on smaller class sizes, cohorting and alternative day or week delivery, and 2) at-home learning with ongoing enhanced remote delivery.

We understand that the ministry will stay in close communication with school boards through June and July, and to provide further guidance based on the latest public health advice in early August to prepare for school opening.  We also understand that the approach suggested by the government is that school boards should adopt adapted delivery models that:
* maintain a limit of 15 students in a typical classroom at one time
* adopt timetabling that would allow, to the greatest extent practical, for students to remain in contact with only their classmates and a single teacher for as much of the school day as possible.

The government report acknowledged that maintaining a limit of 15 or fewer students in a classroom will require alternate day or week delivery.

 The undersigned feel strongly that this is simply not a sustainable model for the health and proper education of our children. Children have been denied their legal and human rights to education since early March.  A failure to return to school full time will mean government and educators have not only failed the children, but parents too, who are at breaking point. It will also impede a kick start to the economy by preventing parents to return in their full capacities back-to-work. There is no viable reopening of the economy without schools and childcare. 

Of equal importance, by providing guidance to parents towards the end of August provides an inadequate amount of time for parents to arrange childcare for September, or for teachers to properly prepare for a fully functional reopening.  We need to engage in sensible decision-making far earlier than proposed.

It has been noted in an open letter from many respected members of the Canadian medical profession to the Canadian government, dated July 6th (link attached below), that the more cautious approaches to dealing with COVID-19
“carries significant risks to overall population health in our children and threatens to increase inequities across the country. In addition, failure to fully reopen schools in September will continue to risk significantly harming our children, particularly the very young, by affecting their development, with life-long consequences in terms of education, skills development, income and overall health. Aiming to prevent or contain every case of COVID-19 is simply no longer sustainable at this stage in the pandemic.  We need to accept that COVID-19 will be with us for some time and to find ways to deal with it.  Elimination of COVID-19 is not a practical objective until we have a vaccine. While there is hope for a vaccine to be developed soon, we must be realistic about the time it will actually take to develop and evaluate it and then deliver an immunization campaign covering the entire population.  We cannot sustain universal control measures indefinitely.  School boards should acknowledge that COVID-19 policies are intended to mitigate, not eliminate, risk. No single action or set of actions will completely eliminate the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”
 
As such, school boards must work to minimize the impact of COVID-19 by using measures that are practical, effective and compatible with our values and sense of social justice.  We need to focus on preventing deaths and serious illness by protecting the vulnerable while enabling society to function and thrive.
 
The Hospital for Sick Children, in their report dated June 17, 2020 (“the SickKids Report”) (link attached below), says children should be allowed to go back to school in September even though the virus will likely still be around in Autumn. The recommendations contained in the SickKids Report state that the risks of infection and transmission in children, which appear to be minimal, need to be balanced with the effects closed schools are having on their physical and mental health, as well on economic recovery if parents cannot return to work.

The SickKids Report acknowledges the fear and anxiety parents, children and school staff have about a return to class this fall by attempting to address a number of concerns such as screening, hand hygiene, physical distancing, use of non-medical masks, and more.
“We have to accept that COVID-19 will stay with us for a long time. We must move on with certain activities in our lives, such as schooling, while keeping in mind that there are a lot of ways to mitigate risk. Not opening schools in September would continue to have a negative impact on the mental, behavioural and developmental health of children. We hope these recommendations help provide a framework to keep everyone safe when school doors reopen,” says Dr. Ronald Cohn, President and CEO of SickKids and one of the authors of the SickKids Report.

The SickKids Report goes on to point out that children account for less than 5-10 per cent of COVID-19 cases globally and in Canada, kids up to 19 years of age make up just 7 per cent of all cases reported as of June 15.

“We know from the flu and from many other respiratory viruses that a child often acts as the super-spreader, and that is something that we really have not seen (with COVID-19).  None of the studies are suggesting that children do not transmit it at all. It’s just not at the high frequency that any of us would have expected,”  Cohn said in a recent webinar.

Dr. Jeremy Friedman, associate pediatrician-in-chief at SickKids, said 5,000 symptomatic children were tested with the COVID-19 nasal swab at the hospital since March and only 30 were found positive. The hospital also tested 1,500 asymptomatic children with a nasal swab and found zero positive cases.
COVID-19 causes a “less severe presentation in children,” said Friedman, with only seven cases requiring hospitalization at SickKids, and not one needing ICU admission. 

The SickKids Report says while self-isolation and stay at home measures have helped to “flatten the curve” they have also had unintended consequences on children’s behaviour and mental health, such as depression, exposure to domestic violence, child abuse and neglect and even suicide.

While the SickKids Report’s authors anticipate an increase in COVID-19 cases once schools are reopened, they are suggesting proactive measures to mitigate the effects of such an increase.  A full list of recommendations can be found in the link to the report below.

In addition to the SickKids Report, the American Academy of Pediatrics (“AAP”) published guidance for school re-entry on June 25th, 2020. 
In it the AAP,
“strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children, because of school closures in the spring of 2020. Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation. This, in turn, places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality. Beyond the educational impact and social impact of school closures, there has been substantial impact on food security and physical activity for children and families.
Policy makers must also consider the mounting evidence regarding COVID-19 in children and adolescents, including the role they may play in transmission of the infection. SARS-CoV-2 appears to behave differently in children and adolescents than other common respiratory viruses, such as influenza, on which much of the current guidance regarding school closures is based. Although children and adolescents play a major role in amplifying influenza outbreaks, to date, this does not appear to be the case with SARS-CoV-2. Although many questions remain, the preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, children may be less likely to become infected and to spread infection. Policies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within schools must be balanced with the known harms to children, adolescents, families, and the community by keeping children at home.”

Aside from The Hospital for SickKids and the AAP mandating full return to school, it should be noted that our European counterparts — such as Denmark, Austria and Germany — that began sending children back to classrooms in April and early May, haven’t seen significant increases in new cases. As reported by the Guardian Newspaper on 13 July 2020:
“Experts there are cautiously optimistic that sending children back to school may be relatively safe. A study by the University hospital in Dresden, Germany analysed blood samples from almost 1,500 children aged between 14 and 18 and 500 teachers from 13 schools in Dresden and the districts of Bautzen and Görlitz in May and June.  It included testing in schools where there were coronavirus outbreaks. Of the almost 2,000 samples, only 12 had antibodies, and the first results gave no evidence that schoolchildren played a role in spreading the virus particularly quickly. ‘Children may even act as a brake on infection,’ Berner told a news conference, saying infections in schools had not led to an outbreak, while the spread of the virus within households was also less dynamic than previously thought.”

Canadian children are at risk of being left behind if their European and American counterparts are allowed to return to classrooms full-time, and they are not.  We ask that you factor in all the evidence above and send our children back to school full-time from 8 September, 2020.

Sincerely yours, 
 
Concerned Parents
 

http://www.balancedresponse.ca/
 
http://www.sickkids.ca/AboutSickKids/Newsroom/Past-News/2020/covid19-recommendations-school-reopening.html
 
https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/covid-19-planning-considerations-return-to-in-person-education-in-schools/