Dear Friends
I hope you have all had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving long weekend. As we are now well into October, I would like to provide you with an update on how things are progressing so far. The start of school this year has been one of the most challenging that the TDSB has ever faced. There are many things that have gone very well, but there are also many lessons that we have learned and many challenges that we are still in the process of overcoming. As we continue to work towards ensuring that this school year is safe, educational, and enjoyable for all of our students, I hope you will also continue to stay engaged and provide me with your valuable insights and recommendations.
The Highlights
Physical Schools: The restart of classes in our physical schools has gone largely without issues. Approximately160,000 students have returned to our bricks and mortar schools this September under an enhanced safety protocol. We have implemented small class sizes in all schools identified by the Toronto Public Health as having enhanced risk, and instituted reduced class sizes for all other physical classrooms identified as low risk.
Virtual Secondary Schools: Virtual school for secondary students started on September 22, 2020. The process for most students has gone smoothly. We have observed some difficulties with time-tabling and access to online platforms for students, however most of these issues were resolved within the first week of school.
Student Safety: The implementation of safety measures within schools has been very encouraging. It has been a challenge for students and staff to implement these measures, but we see that all are doing their best to protect both themselves and others around them. So far in Ward 13, there have been four confirmed cases among school staff (some these prior to the start of school), and four confirmed cases in the student body. As of October 12, we understand that all cases identified in schools were acquired through transmission external to school communities. Toronto Public Health has not declared an outbreak in any Ward 13 schools. An outbreak would be declared if two members of a school community test positive for COVID-19 within a 14-day period, and if one of those cases is believed to have been contracted from interactions within a school. As our province is experiencing a second surge in COVID-19 cases, I hope everyone will continue to stay vigilant and work hard to remain safe.
Challenges within our Elementary Virtual Schools
The introduction of our elementary virtual school was one that faced many challenges. Many of our students have faced issues accessing Brightspace, and some are still waiting for a teacher to be assigned.
Brightspace: System updates have been required to support the massive number of students accessing Brightspace for virtual learning. In many cases student accounts had to be reset, and this resulted in a number of our students losing access to the Brightspace platform. As a result, the call volume to our IT Helpdesk overwhelmed our customer service capacity and left many parents desperately searching the internet for a way to login. During this time I witnessed many parents stepping up to lend a helping hand and sharing information with others. It was very moving to see our community coming together to support each other during a time when our system was struggling to keep up. Many thanks to all of those who took the time to assist!
Teachers Shortage: Virtual school was scheduled to begin on September 22. Unfortunately, there was a significant delay for some students as we were unable to provide them with teacher assignments. There were two main contributing factors for this.
Last Minute Hiring: As the number of COVID-19 cases started to raise in early September, many students were moved at the last minute from physical schools to virtual learning. This resulted in close to additional 20 thousand students entering into our virtual programs. which in turn prompted the need to staff an additional 800 teachers within just a few days of notice. To avoid a last-minute reorganization in physical schools which would have resulted in a delayed start of school for all students, senior staff decided to hire occasional teachers to fill the gaps. Unfortunately, not all the hiring could be completed in such a short time span. For this reason virtual classes started with a deficit in teachers.
Teacher Resignations: As many of the newly hired long-term occasional teachers worked through the two-day virtual training sessions, some of these educators found the work to be unsuitable either because of the existing circumstance, or because this way of teaching did not suit their personal teaching style. We experienced a surprisingly high turn-over amongst our virtual school teachers within the first week of their employment. Staff, with now no time to spare, were faced with hiring additional virtual teachers.
Leaves of Absence: The shortage of teachers has also created a challenge in providing virtual classrooms with a supply teacher should a teacher need to go on leave. This is compounded by the fact that a virtual teacher must go through a two-day training program for virtual teaching, and they must be set up with an online profile. The pool of available and qualified supply teachers is dramatically smaller than that for bricks and mortar schools.
Solutions to Challenges within our Elementary Virtual Schools
Senior staff of the TDSB, with strong encouragement from the Board of Trustees, have accessed every resource available to resolve our virtual school challenges as quickly as possible. I would like to be clear that many of these solutions are temporary in nature and they are designed to close our teacher shortage gap until a permanent solution can be put in place after October 13.
1. Some students enrolled in French Immersion and Extended French virtual programs have been assigned temporary English teachers until a qualified French teacher can be assigned.
2. Some teachers have been assigned two separate cohorts temporarily with separate instructions alternating between the morning and afternoons.
3. Some French Immersion and Extended French classes have been assigned a team of two teachers (one English teacher, and one qualified French teacher). This allows the TDSB to complete the necessary French curriculum in two classes using only one qualified French teaching resource.
The above-mentioned solutions have allowed for 99% of our students begin learning with an assigned teacher. Beginning the week of October 13, full time teachers will be reassigned from physical schools to close the teacher shortfall gap in virtual schools. Our senior staff expect this reorganization of teachers will bring us a long-term solution to the staffing challenges we are currently experiencing in our virtual schools.
Elementary School Reorganization
Each year, the TDSB reorganizes staffing within our schools at the beginning of October to true up the teacher assignments based on actual enrollment numbers. A school with a higher than expected number of students will be assigned additional teachers, and vice versa. This year, due to a large number of students electing to switch to virtual classes between the end of August and September 15, and then again between September 16 and September 30, our physical schools became over staffed by 500 teachers. This overstaffing of physical bricks and mortar schools also became the main drive behind the staffing challenges experienced by our virtual schools.
As you can see from the chart below the average class sizes within the non-high-risk physical school is quite a bit below our original plan. And if we dig deeper into these numbers, we had 166 classrooms with 10 or less students as of September 30.
