Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen held a press conference this morning to welcome students back to class.
Goertzen says there are a number of people that are critical to having a great year and at the top of the list are those working in schools, teachers and administrators.
"They were back already last week, doing really, really important work and some people have seen the physical spacing of the desks and different things within the schools, hand sanitization stations, the directions, the arrows, a lot of different things in the schools. That preparatory work last week is critical for how things go, not just today, but in the days ahead. I really want to thank our teachers, our administrators who came back."
Goertzen wants to give a lot of credit to teachers, who in some ways have to relearn how to teach because all the methods of group teaching, having students close together and working together has to change.
On the topic of COVID in the school, Goertzen expects cases because COVID is in our society and schools are a part of society.
Because of that, he’s preaching transparency.
"I think we need to be transparent with the public more generally about where cases are being found, not because we want to create fear, but the exact opposite. I believe that public health and school officials are going to do a very good job, when they find cases within the schools, reacting to those cases, isolating those cases ensuring they don't spread more broadly, and if we can provide that information, I think it'll provide confidence more than it'll provide fear."
Goertzen says even though this won’t be a normal school year, he still wants it to be an excellent one.
