The President of the BC Teachers Federation says schools will remain open but students won’t be attending school in the traditional sense.
Teri Mooring admits there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
“The only conversations we have had so far are around the children of teachers and the emergency care providers, so our nurses, our doctors, our emergency workers. It’s important that they are able to work obviously, and so schools will have rooms available and will be repurposed for what communities might need I have no doubt. What that exactly looks like right now we really don’t know.”
Mooring said as soon as the answers are available they will be relayed to the public, and she says the good news is there is time to work things out.
“I really appreciate the careful, thoughtful approach the government is taking. We can’t make decisions in a rash way so I totally support the timing around this announcement. I think it was important that it happened now so that people have the assurance of at least knowing some information about what’s going to happen. I totally support what the government is going, it’s all based on science, and folks were, for the most part, 90 percent of students in this entire province was already on spring break. so I don’t think it did need to happen earlier but I think it did need to happen now.”
Mooring said the province also didn’t provide any false assurances as the reality is “we don’t know when schools will re-open in the traditional sense.”
– with files from George Henderson, My Cariboo Now