Catholic schools prepare for fall restart as online demand soars

This story was edited to correct one of the school names mentioned. St. James Elementary has released plans for drop-off and school entry locations for students based on grade and last name.

Demand for distance education this fall is so high that one of B.C.’s largest online learning schools has nearly 800 students on standby, uncertain if they’ll be accepted.

“We rarely have a waitlist,” said Gabe Linder, principal of Traditional Learning Academy Online. “Last year we didn’t have a waitlist at all.”

TLA Online, which has a high enrolment of Catholic families, usually accommodates about 1,000 students. More than 1,400 are enrolled this year, and “by the time the dust settles, that number will almost certainly be higher,” said Linder.

“We hired many new teachers to accommodate about a 20 per cent increase in students, even before addressing the waitlist,” said Linder, who attributes the skyrocketing interest in distance learning to the pandemic.

“Some families will have permanently shifted their thinking around the desired mode of education for their children, and the pandemic was the tipping point that pushed them over to a home-based program,” he said.

“Other families will probably test the waters to see how home learning works out for their family, and some will likely be with us only for a year if the pandemic concerns are not as grave next school year.”

In May, the B.C. government announced it was cutting funding for independent online schooling to bring it inline with funding for brick-and-mortar independent schools. Linder said the reduction resulted in a funding loss of $792 per student. “This was short-sighted and has seriously hampered our ability to assist families looking for home-based services.”

Meanwhile, physical schools (including Traditional Learning Academy’s Coquitlam campus) had until last week to finalize their restart plans and submit them to B.C.’s education ministry. Approved plans were to be publicly released and published online by Aug. 26.

On Aug. 24, the superintendent for Catholic Independent Schools of Vancouver Archdiocese, Deacon Henk Luyten, revealed details of the restart plan for Catholic schools. 

He said all teachers will return to school Sept. 8 and nearly all students will be back to school full-time Sept. 10. This follows the Ministry of Education’s expectations that schools move to Stage 2 of B.C.’s Education Restart Program. (Under the government’s five-stage plan, Stage 1 would look like normal in-class learning without the cohort size restrictions.)

“There will be no remote learning in Stage 2” except in select high school settings that require supplemental distance learning, said Deacon Luyten.

Under Stage 2 of the government’s plan, elementary and middle school students will be divided into “cohorts” or “learning groups” of no more than 60 students and staff “to limit contact and possible exposure” to the virus.

Secondary students will be in groups of 120. “This may result in some grades being on a different timetable than others and students may take four courses for 20 weeks or two courses for 10 weeks,” Deacon Luyten said.

Specific scheduling details will be left up to individual schools.

Other safety measures will also to be in place, including increased cleaning of high-contact surfaces like doorknobs and keyboards, increased hand hygiene, and non-medical masks provided for staff and students in middle and secondary schools.

Masks will be required while using common areas such as school buses, hallways, or anywhere teachers or students are interacting with people outside their learning groups.

Deacon Luyten acknowledged not every child will be able to go to school full time in September. Students who are sick, immunocompromised, or have a pre-existing pulmonary condition have other options for returning and should contact their schools to discuss their options, he said.

Parents not willing to send their children back to full-time in-class learning may also “consider distributed learning and consult their local school district or other online services such as Ascend Online or TLA Online.” 

Another option is homeschooling, which would require registering with the B.C. Ministry of Education but would prevent parents from reserving a full-time spot at a CISVA school, he said.

Deacon Luyten said if the the Ministry of Education decides to move to another stage, CISVA schools will react accordingly.

At St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary School in North Vancouver, principal John Campbell announced an overhaul of the school schedule from a linear system to a semester model. It will reduce the number of students a teacher is in contact with by half and cut by half the number of textbooks students need to bring to school, which will be helpful since lockers won’t be provided this year.

Campbell said two free reusable cloth masks will be provided for each student and staff member, and the cafeteria will be open, though without self-service options and with staggered lunch times for different cohorts.

Vancouver’s Little Flower Academy has not only moved over to a semester system, it has refit all washrooms with touchless faucets and installed hand sanitizing stations, plexiglass barriers, and extra desks and lockers to minimize sharing of equipment.

Vancouver College has also had to rearrange its schedule, staggering times of arrival, departure, and breaks for all students depending on grade. It has closed its cafeteria and will encourage students to bring bagged meals while it considers an online lunch ordering system.

Masks are required while entering the Vancouver College campus, and students will be advised by teachers when it is appropriate to remove them in their classrooms. The school is discouraging campus visits by parents.

St. James Elementary in Abbotsford has released plans that include various drop-off and school entry locations for students based on grade and last name, and parents have been told to ensure their children have appropriate outer wear, as students will “spend as much time learning outside as possible.”

Meanwhile, the fledgling Saint John Paul II Academy is facing entirely different circumstances. Principal Mich DesLauriers said the two-year-old Surrey high school, with just 50 students and nine staff, falls well within the government’s 120-person cohort limit. 

“We can have full 100 per cent in-school instruction for all of our students” without revising course schedules or staggering lunch times, he said. “We’re delighted to be able to do that.”

The small enrolment also means masks are optional and students and teachers are free to interact with anyone in the school, unlike larger schools where students are limited to interacting within their cohorts. “That makes the transition, particularly for our newest students, easier than a lot of the other high schools,” DesLauriers said. 

But the academy doesn’t have its own school building yet – it’s seeking rezoning approval from the City of Surrey to build one – and is currently renting space from Star of the Sea Parish. Encountering other parish tenants is a rare occurrence at the moment, but any increase in people using the facilities could add sanitizing challenges.

DesLauriers cautioned that the pandemic situation is always changing and today’s best plans for back-to-school could become outdated in the near future.

There are 52 Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Vancouver with more than 16,300 students.