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Number of students switching learning modes at UGDSB 'significantly smaller' than expected

Finding teachers for remote French and senior math courses is a challenge for the UGDSB
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The second wave of the pandemic and cases in schools are the main reasons families are switching to remote learning, says the UGDSB.

But the number of people switching to remote learning is much lower than expected.

In an Intent to Change Survey conducted between Oct. 14 to Oct. 21 by the Upper Grand District School Board, families were given the option to change between in-person and remote school modes of learning.

“The majority of our movement from schools came from families with increasing concerns with the provincial rise in COVID-19 numbers and from school communities that have reported positive COVID-19 cases within their schools,” said Brent McDonald, superintendent of education at UGDSB in a board meeting Tuesday.  

“The number of students moving is significantly smaller than we might have anticipated,” McDonald said.

He said that many families have been waiting to move to a learning model that might better meet their family needs. 

Roughly 800 families participated in the re-entry survey.The data is currently being reviewed and cleaned up for schools to use.  

In elementary schools, McDonald said approximately 220 students in total from in-person learning and synchronous remote learning opted to move into the asynchronous remote program.

“From our bricks and mortar schools, we’ve had about 467 students move from within the walls of our schools to our synchronous learning environment within our elementary remote schools where they will be receiving live instruction but online,” said McDonald. 

The survey also revealed that 221 elementary students opted to switch from remote learning to in-person school learning. 

“The end result will see roughly 4,300 students in our elementary remote school on Nov. 30,” said McDonald adding that the number represents an approximate 10 per cent increase of students in elementary schools.  

McDonald said the board has also been trying to reduce the number of families wanting to move to homeschool due to concerns of COVID-19. He said the board is offering an asynchronous learning environment that looks very much like homeschooling. 

“Since the beginning of October, we have deterred roughly 130 students from moving to homeschooling from within our schools and have been able to capture them within our elementary remote schools often within our asynchronous learning environment,” said McDonald. 

“An additional 64 synchronous students who were considering going homeschooling were also stopped over the couple of weeks and encouraged to remain in our asynchronous program.”

In an update about secondary schools, Carlo Zen, student success lead at the UGDSB said that 565 students have opted to switch to the secondary remote school and 104 students chose to go back to bricks and mortar building schools causing the overall enrollment in remote schools to go over 1,900 students.  

“Currently we are looking at additional support for the remote schools, additional guidance staff to support quadmester 2,” said Zen. 

Zen said remote school is going well with the pressure point, in particular, being French courses and senior math.

“But we are confident we can meet those needs going forward,” said Zen. 

McDonald said the next step for school administrators is to reorganize classes on paper this week based on new data. The board will then organize staffing after it meets with its union partners next week. 

“There will be some impact on class reorganization as predicted and students will be in place in their new classes after their progress reports on their PD day on Nov. 30.

“We still anticipate this to have some impact on students needed to be moved to schools as we reorganize to accommodate the change in school numbers.” 

He said some of the largest schools are losing approximately 30 sections for the second quadmester and it goes down proportionately for the smaller schools. 


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Anam Khan

About the Author: Anam Khan

Anam Khan is a journalist who covers numerous beats in Guelph and Wellington County that include politics, crime, features, environment and social justice
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