Canadian parents share relief, concern as several provinces send kids back to school – CBC

Omicron has impacted case management in schools, prompting parents to make difficult decisions for their kids

Jan 17, 2022

Elementary and high school students in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Nunavut are poised to return to classrooms this week.

The Omicron wave has had an outsized impact on COVID-19 case management across the country, and several provinces are eschewing traditional case counts as a metric for the spread of the coronavirus in schools, which has led to difficult decisions for parents worried both about the safety of their children as well as the impact of virtual learning on their education and mental health.

CBC News spoke with Canadian parents about their decisions to send their kids back to school this week — or keep them home.

“The decision was easy for us because I’ve seen the negative effects of online learning for my children,” said Katherine Korakakis, a Montreal parent and the president of the English Parents Committee Association, an organization that represents 100,000 students in Quebec’s English public school system.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/education-schools-return-omicron-1.6315196