To protect everyone’s health and safety, it is important that all students (or parents on behalf of students) continue to use Ontario's COVID-19 School and Child Care Screening Tool daily.
The screening tool has been updated with new and more sensitive direction around symptoms and isolation. You can download the school and child care screening form here which articulates the symptom and isolation requirements.
We will send daily reminders to all families each morning with a link to the screening to reinforce the importance of this step to protect everyone’s health and safety. We will include a confirmation process with these reminders.
Secondary students will receive an email to their Grand Erie email accounts to complete and verify completion of the screening.
Please see this useful decision tree to help you decide what to do should your child exhibit symptoms at home.
All students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 are still required to bring from home and wear an appropriate cloth or medical/surgical mask. N95 masks for students are also allowed but will not be supplied. The Province is continuing to provide free high quality, three-ply cloth masks to be available at the school if a student needs a mask.
All education staff will have the option to wear a non-fit-tested N95 mask (supplied by the Province) or medical/surgical (ASTM Level 2) masks.
Elementary students will be required to cohort during recess and outdoor breaks to limit contacts as much as possible during this period.
Essential visitors to schools will continue (e.g., food programs and parents picking up children), but we are pausing on non-essential visitors.
The Province has sent Grand Erie an additional 45 HEPA filters. Our schools were already in compliance with ventilation requirements following the first round of installations over the summer and fall, and these additional units are being deployed to self-contained classes and areas of higher occupancy.
The Province of Ontario has changed its focus for COVID-19 PCR testing. PCR testing is no longer generally available. Cohort-based dismissals at the direction of local public health units will no longer occur but shifts to temporary remote learning may be required due to staffing challenges. Self assessment through daily screening, combined with rapid antigen testing (when available), will be the basis for isolation decisions.
Rapid antigen tests will be distributed to schools for staff and students as supplies are received and they are available. The initial goal for these tests is to have two available for each staff member and student. Distribution to elementary schools, as an initial focus, has begun.
Schools have a limited supply of PCR take-home tests to be used only for staff or students who develop multiple symptoms at schools to take home with them.
Unvaccinated staff will continue to conduct rapid antigen testing three times per week.
As the Province has outlined, schools and public health units will not be contacting families about positive cases in a school as happened previously. If your child has COVID, or you suspect your child has COVID, remember to notify all close contacts in the community with which your child had contact in the last 48 hours before your child's symptoms began or their positive test result. A close contact in the community is anyone who your child:
Based on the new provincial guidance, being in the same classroom cohort is not considered a high-risk contact because preventive and protective measures are in place. If a student in your child's cohort tests positive or has symptoms, you should continue to monitor your child for symptoms every day. The new provincial guidance indicates that your child can continue to attend school if they do not have any symptoms.
The Province has directed all boards to report when an absence threshold of 30 per cent has been reached. We will be posting statistics on absences based on illness daily on our COVID page (this feature will not be available until next week) to help keep parents informed. If absences reach 30 per cent greater than the baseline of absences for any individual school, families and our local public health units will be advised.
We continue to strongly support in-person learning as the best option for students.
We understand some families may have compelling reasons to move to online learning or may not feel comfortable returning to in-person learning immediately.
If parents wish to have their child in temporary remote learning, their child can continue to log into their current Brightspace classroom for asynchronous learning activities. Their classroom teacher will connect with them periodically while they are learning remotely. Further inquiries can be made through the school Principal.
As directed by the Province, we will be working with our local public health units on supporting school-based vaccination clinics. These will be only through parental consent.
Vaccines are safe, effective and the best way to protect you and those that you care for from COVID-19. Please check with the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit or the Brant County Health Unit to book a vaccination.