Virtual Elementary School Update
The launching of TDSB's Virtual School has been extraordinarily challenging, and has caused considerable stress and frustration for some students, parents, staff, and trustees, alike. With the number of students in the Virtual School increasing from 60,000 in early September, to over 77,000 on its launch date, staffing for these numbers has proved problematic despite board staff working all summer to build a robust roster of teachers. As students have been placed in classes over the past weeks, including those in smaller ISP classes, the number of teachers required in the Virtual School has increased from 2,200 to 2,400. Staff are working exceptionally hard each and every day to recruit, interview, hire and on-board new staff as quickly as possible.
Parents/Students Currently Without a Teacher Assignment
Work has continued through and since the weekend to hire teachers — an issue being faced by a number of school boards in the GTA — and the goal is to have all classrooms up and running by mid-to-late this week. As of 5pm on Monday, Sept. 28, staff was looking to hire approximately 95 more teachers (a total of roughly 15 English and 80 French Immersion/Extended French teachers total), and creative solutions were being considered to meet the needs of our French programs. Staff are making progress and anticipate that all positions will be filled over the coming days.
If your child does not yet have a teacher assigned, please continue to access the independent learning resources web page where more resources, activities and live teacher-led videos have been added for the second week. As well, daily live sessions for Kindergarten to Grade 8 continue and recordings of all sessions are also available online.
Teacher Communication: Once hired and assigned to a class, teachers are provided two days of Brightspace training and will then get their virtual classroom up and running and contact families/students. At this point, we anticipate that all Virtual School classrooms will be underway by mid-to-late this week and families that have not yet heard from a teacher should expect contact in that timeframe.
Board Communication: Trustees have stressed with staff that regular and frequent communication about progress on the roll out of the Virtual School is essential. All Elementary Virtual School families will receive a further update on Tuesday, September 29.
IT Support: If you are experiencing account and/or password issues, please access support by completing this form. Once the information has been verified, login and password information for your child will be emailed to you.
Additionally, you can access the TDSB Brightspace Information Page for more information, tutorials, TDSB Brightspace Support, and/or access Brightspace support 24 hours a day In addition, a designated parent phone support line has been created at 416-396-9100, and it is open Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
If you are a teacher with questions about Brightspace, please visit KEY to Learn, under Course Registration and the Virtual School Staff section.
Principal Contact Information
We understand that you may have questions or concerns and would like to speak directly with someone at your child’s Virtual Elementary School. If your regular school is located in Ward 11, then you are in the Learning Centre 1 (LC1) Virtual Elementary School. There are three principals assigned to LC1, and their contact information is as follows:
Virtual School Teacher Absences
Please be aware that, at this time, it may not be possible to provide a replacement teacher to cover classes when the classroom teacher is absent. Students are encouraged to complete work that has been assigned by the classroom teacher or are encouraged to access the available resources and videos on the Asynchronous (independent) Learning Activities web page.
Elementary Virtual School Class Placement Criteria
Students in JK - grade 4 have been clustered into classes with students from the same grade from the same home school as much as possible. As a general guiding principle, there are at least 2 or more students together in a virtual class from the same homeschool. In some cases at the various stages of placements there was only one student request from a school per grade. In order for TDSB to accomplish this guiding principle, it required students to be hand registered in Trillium (the student registration system) one at a time.
Student in grades 5-8 have been registered by grade cohorts with a balance of gender while trying to have as much diversity in our classes as possible. While there may be students from their homeschool in their class, it is not a consistent practice as the JK-4 cohort, because the large numbers of students interested in Virtual School prevented staff from following the same practice. It would have required several more weeks to cohort all grades by home school. There may be students in classes with the same surname letter, but we ensured distinct surnames in classes as much as possible.
Secondary Virtual School
We know that some students still do not have timetables due to the significant increase in the demand for virtual school just prior to the September 15 deadline. To address this issue, additional sections for courses have just been created. These classes will begin on Monday, October 5 and end on Wednesday, November 25 and will run Monday to Friday, from 3:30 to 6 p.m. and will include a two-hour synchronous/live session with the teacher (same as courses in Periods 1 and 2).
In order to meet the significant demand, we continue to explore additional offerings during Quad 2, as well as Saturday offerings. Stay tuned for more information to come!
