Concern over the spread of COVID-19 has delayed some voting in the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial election, postponed school holidays in Ontario and prompted Manitoba to seek vaccine from a Canadian supplier.
March break will have to wait until April for Ontario students, the province’s education minister says, as the government aims to limit travel amid a drop in COVID-19 cases but as risks from new virus variants loom.
The province’s education minister says schools in COVID-19 hot spots in and around Toronto should be planning for a return to classrooms at a yet-to-be-determined date.
Ontario will offer a one-off payment of $200 to the parents of high school students, whom the province has ordered to stay home for an extended winter break, the provincial government said on Tuesday.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce has boasted in recent weeks that the Progressive Conservatives’ back-to-school strategy is working, but epidemiological studies and experts suggest it’s difficult to make that claim without more testing.
Ontario’s education minister won’t say whether kids will get an extended winter break this year, but the Ford government is considering it to protect the classrooms Stephen Lecce says are the safest in the country.
Toronto’s youth cabinet and a string of education and human rights groups are reupping demands for rigorous provincial action to root out systemic racism in schools, wary of the issue getting pushed aside amid broader pandemic-related challenges.
The question of how to deal with education sits at the centre of the province’s reopening dilemma, since anything less than a full return to classes makes it difficult for working parents who have for months been juggling both the working and the parenting.
Ontario's education minister accused Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau on Wednesday, October 2, 2019, of trying to politicize the province's labour negotiations with school support workers to score points ahead of the federal election.
