Catholic board pushing reorganization back to November 9
The Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board has pushed back its school reorganization deadline to November 9.
It had been scheduled for November 2, but so many parents have elected to send their children back to in-class learning that the education director decided they needed more time to reorganize classes to accommodate the students.
"Changing the date was necessary to accommodate the volume of requests we received and to ensure that our classrooms are properly organized for our students' transition on Monday Nov. 9.," said communications coordinator Stephen Fields in an email.
There are 13,043 elementary school students in the system. Some are learning online and some are learning in class. Eight hundred of the students who had been learning online will now be returning to class. One hundred who were in class will be going online.
"Reorganization of our system will be challenging, some teachers will be switched to do this, however, we need more time to transition to make sure that it is smooth," Education Director Terry Lyons told the school board Tuesday night.
"People struggle with change, but when you add chaos on top of that, it is a recipe for complete disaster, and we don't want to be in that situation."
The next time parents can make a switch will be in January, but Lyons told the board they are considering making that the last time because it would be too disruptive to make any more changes.
"We think it will continue to be challenging if you have a student who could possibly end up with three or four different teachers during the school year," said Lyons.
Enrolment in elementary is down by 360 students compared to last year. Some of it is due to a large graduating Grade 8 class last year, but Superintendent Colleen Norris said the pandemic is the major reason.
"We see large numbers of our early learners, our young families, who decided that with JK/SK not being mandatory, that they would elect to defer their attendance," said Norris.
"But we do anticipate, as we do every year, some continued registrations and we will continue to welcome them in."
There was an increase in the number of post-secondary students in the system — 77 compared to last year, bringing the total to 7,187. All the post-secondary students are taking classes in a hybrid model combination of in person and online. They are not eligible to change.
Lyons said some school boards have elected to switch the elementary students to a hybrid model, but he said they are not considering that here yet.
The enrolment figures available were as of September 30.
