Former educator renews call to delay school start in B.C. amid COVID-19 pandemic

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – More voices are calling for a delay to the start of the school year as teachers across British Columbia prepare to welcome students back to class later this week.

A lifetime educator says he feels teachers have been abandoned from the top down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Retired teacher Doug Player says it starts with the education minister, who set impossible parameters for face-to-face learning during the pandemic, then provincial health officer Dr Bonnie Henry, who he feels has bent safety rules for teachers. Player also says the union — the BCTF — has not stood up for its members.

“I think in a rush to find normalcy of the past, which I don’t think is ever going to be available again, we missed an opportunity, and in doing so, we’re sending teachers into a situation where they are definitely fearful of this virus,” Player explains. “But more than that, they aren’t prepared for the year that’s in front of them. And everything that’s come at them has been laid on them from the top down.”

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From the Ministry of Education’s direction that all students must attend classes in person, full time, to amending that directive to allowing some remote learning, Player says Minister Rob Fleming has “passed the buck to the boards.”

The problem in doing so, Player explains, is that some school boards have the capacity to bring in alternative learning options while others do not.

“And now he’s divided the money on a per-student basis, and that injures or enables, I guess, far more inequities than exist already, because the small boards will get a very small amount,” he tells NEWS 1130.

Player would have liked to have seen the B.C. government offer some sort of “provincial platform” to allow teachers to teach remotely, if needed.

Delay to Oct. 1

Player, who is also a former administrator, district superintendent, and current blogger is adding his voice to others who want to bump the start of the school year to Oct. 1.

“Give everybody three weeks to settle down, to figure out the system, to get prepared for the students, and in fact to really create a better system in the schools,” he tells NEWS 1130.

“If you put the teachers in their local school with their administrators and gave them much more leeway, including a hybrid model and the ability to have that, they could create some phenomenal ways to be both safe and deliver the curriculum much better than a quarter system does.”

Other suggestions he has is to open classes over the weekends to spread in-person classes “over a greater space and time,” and bring in people, such as administrators with previous teaching experience, to assist with educating for a short time.

He feels teachers have been failed at every turn, from the education minister setting impossible parameters down to the union, which Player says has not stood up for its teacher members.

Player believes the province missed the mark by laying its plans out so late in the summer.

“And even then, they began to change those throughout August so nobody knew what was happening. Some of these teachers are walking in on Tuesday and they’ll find out their assignments then. How can they prepare in two days for a different system?” he says, adding he’s heard from some instructors directly.

Player asserts an opportunity has been missed to rejig the school system during the COVID-19 pandemic in favour of student learning.

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