This morning, we learned that Pembina Hills School Division’s application to Alberta Education to move all BCHS students to temporary at-home learning beginning Monday, May 03 has been approved. Since students in grades 10-12 have already been learning-at-home, return dates for students would be as follows:
- Grade 10-12 students return on Monday, May 25
- Grade 7-9 students return Monday, May 25
The reason for this shift is three fold:
- To ensure the health and well being of all students and staff
- To minimize disruption to families due to required isolation with each positive case
- To minimize the opportunity for spreading the virus, especially with the prevalence of the COVID variant in our area.
Although our health measures have minimized in-school transmission of the virus, we currently have 14 students who have tested positive with close to 60% of our students sent home to isolate. With each additional positive case, we are required to send another class of students home. This has also resulted in staffing shortages as 7 of our teachers and 1 support staff are currently required to isolate. Finding substitute teachers to ensure continued quality instruction for our students has also been challenging.
We know that learning from home is not ideal and this also creates hardship for some of our families. Our hope is to have students return to normal class routines and we need your help to make this possible. On Friday afternoon, the current active case rate in the County of Barrhead was 1022 per 100K. To put this in perspective, Edmonton had a current active case rate of 403 per 100K but all 7-12 schools were shifted to on-line learning. Please ensure to follow the Public Health Measures and ensure your children do as well.
We want to thank all of our families who have diligently contacted the school to let us know when a student is ill or going for a test. This is very helpful as we are able to respond quickly. A few tips that parents have shared with us:
- If your child is deemed a close contact, postpone the first test for a day or two. It appears that it takes a few days for the virus to present itself.
- If anyone in your household is ill or going for a test, please keep your school aged children at home until you have confirmation that the illness is not Covid related. The virus seems to travel through families quite quickly.
Our thoughts are with the families who are managing illness and with those whose movements are restricted by quarantine. We are hopeful that the temporary shift to at-home learning will help to keep everyone safe until the case rate comes down. Thank you for your help and understanding as we work together to support student learning.
Ms. Darcie Eamor
Principal, BCHS