St. Albert-area parents and kids had a message for Morinville-St. Albert UCP MLA Dale Nally on Friday: do more to protect our kids at school from the pandemic.
About 30 people (including a dog and a baby) were at Nally’s constituency office in Morinville Aug. 21 to protest the province’s plans to resume in-person classes this fall. Similar rallies happened in 26 other ridings across Alberta as part of the grassroots #SafeSeptemberAB movement.
The province announced a return to in-person instruction in late July. The provincial NDP, the Alberta Teachers’ Association and various grassroots organizations have criticized the plan for not reducing class sizes, which they argue could reduce the risk of the pandemic spreading through crowded classrooms.
Beaumont parent Stacey Speta said in a phone interview she organized these rallies under the hashtag #SafeSeptemberAB after she publicized plans on Twitter to hold a protest at her local MLA’s office. Others from across the province thought that was a great idea and planned their own demonstrations.
Parents protest
In Morinville, children and adults waved signs and wrote messages such as “Fund our students” and “I choo-choo-choose public education” on the sidewalk with coloured chalk Friday morning. One man drew many honks from passing drivers with his “Honk for public education” sign.
Violet Chea, a Grade 4 student from St. Albert, wrote “Keep me safe” in big pink letters outside Nally’s office and said she was scared to go back to school.
“Not a lot of people are going to be social distancing, and people might not be washing their hands and stuff,” she said.
Morinville parent Stacey Buga said she planned to have her three children take classes online this fall because she was not convinced they would be safe from the coronavirus in school.
“My oldest in Grade 9 is looking at 36 kids in their classroom,” she said.
“Thirty-six kids with one teacher is a problem under normal circumstances,” she continued – now, that one teacher also has to worry about sanitizing desks and supervising mask use.
Grandmother Jane Miller of St. Albert said the province should provide schools with the cash they need for protective gear during the pandemic and consider having only half of a school's population attend class in person at a time to keep class sizes down.
“I’m a grandmother with 10 grandchildren and four children who are teachers, and I won’t be able to see any of them when school resumes,” she said – her age makes her more vulnerable to COVID-19, and her children would be exposed to an unsafe number of carriers under the current school plan.
Call for a cap
Rally participants called on the province to increase education funding so schools could hire more teachers and assistants, and cap class sizes at 15 students to ensure physical distancing, mask use and hand sanitization could be properly implemented. They also wanted funding for special needs students in Kindergarten restored.
“There’s no class-size cap even though the epidemiologists have said that would be the best way to reduce transmission in schools,” Speta said, adding New Brunswick has a 15-student cap in place for some of its classes this fall. Nor had the province explored the use of vacant buildings (such as university lecture halls, many of which would be vacant due to online classes) to house students.
Speta said a recent CBC story showed most schools have more than 15 students per class and some have over 30.
“If you put 30 kids in a room with poor ventilation, which a lot of the older schools have, we’re going to see some issues,” Speta said.
Reached by phone, Nally said calls to cap class sizes at 15 are unrealistic, as the province does not have the 13,000 additional teachers such a cap needs. He stood by the province’s school reopening plan and said it is backed by provincial chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
“This is a good plan, and it’s going to put student safety and teacher safety first.”
