At this time, we are asking parents to make decisions about school attendance in September, so we can ensure proper staffing for both our school classrooms and the Learn At Home program.

On July 29, the provincial government announced that elementary students in KPR will attend school five days per week, with enhanced health and safety requirements. Secondary students in our school board will also attend school full-time, with timetable adjustments that reduce the number of classes each day, and limit student and staff contacts.

Earlier this week, we shared our Return to School Plan with families and staff. Our plan supports one central principle: safeguarding the health and welfare of students, staff and the community in a manner that reflects the Board’s core values. Our planning is based on advice, guidance and directives of provincial and local public health officials and includes important information and protocols for students, staff and families.

The full document is available on our website, at: www.kprschools.ca/en/COVID-19.html along with an extensive list of Frequently Asked Questions. Please click here to access the Frequently Asked Questions.

Registration – Online Learn At Home Program

Families with elementary and secondary students may choose not to attend in-person school at this time (both elementary and secondary). Students who opt-out of in-class learning will continue to receive instruction through our established distance learning models, with an emphasis on real-time learning.

Students participating in online distance education will sign-in daily, participate in both real-time and independent study, follow the same curriculum as their peers attending school in person and be able to contact their teachers for help and to have questions answered.

If families change their decision regarding whether they want their children to attend in person after the start of school, their requests for a change will be addressed as soon as possible. We will ask that families be patient as some time will be required to develop transition plans from one form of learning to another as we will need to adhere to Ministry of Education and Public Health guidelines that support student and staff health, safety and well-being. Secondary students returning to in-person learning may be limited to the new term or new semester based on course availability, enrolment, and time missed in the course.

Families who wish to enroll their children in the online Learn At Home program are asked to do so by Wednesday, August 19, 2020 by clicking here.

 Year 1 Kindergarten students who wish to participate in the Learn At Home program will need to send a message to kpr_info@kprdsb.ca to register since these students do not yet have an OEN. Please include your student's name and the school name in your message.

Only students participating in the Learn At Home Program need to register. All other students will be assumed to be participating in the full-time in-school model.

To All KPR Families,

As you may be aware, since we sent out our back-to-school update for families yesterday, the Ministry of Education announced new information. In particular, we received new details regarding the Ministry’s planning for online, at-home learning. We recognize that families would like as much information as possible regarding our learn-at-home plans before they enroll their children by the August 19 date we communicated yesterday. To help you in making that decision, we are pleased to forward the provincial information to you as quickly as possible.

For the 300 minutes per day that must be spent on online instruction, the province has outlined how much time must be devoted to synchronous learning. Synchronous learning refers to live, real-time teaching when students in the class are connected by computer directly with the teacher and can interact with the teacher.   The requirements are as follows:

The table below outlines the minimum amount of time per day that students, depending on their grade level, must be provided with synchronous learning as part of their scheduled or timetabled learning.

Secondary students at KPR will follow a full course schedule over the year with four quadmesters, each quadmester including two, 150-minute classes per day.

We are now planning how these Ministry requirements will be put in place in each grade. We will provide more information to parents as soon as we are able. Planning for school in these unprecedented times continues to be very fluid and changeable, and we are responding as quickly as we can.

We have also added information to our Frequently Asked Questions, which you can access by clicking here. This includes further details on:

• Use of Alternate Learning Spaces
• Learn At Home program for French Immersion Students
• Transferring from In-person to Learn At Home program
• School Ventilation.

We encourage parents to check our website often at http://kprschools.ca/en/COVID-19.html for any further news.

August 19 Update

Staggered Start to In-school Learning

The board will be putting in place a staggered start to the first week of the school year. This will allow different grades or students to return to school on different days so students and staff can become more comfortable with new routines and health and safety practices. More information will be shared home to parents through schools as these schedules are finalized.

At last night’s Board meeting, school board Trustees also approved the use of an additional $5.5 million from reserves to support back-to-school planning efforts to support the:

• hiring of additional custodial staff,
• hiring of additional teachers to lower some class sizes,
• potential lease of space for classes should there be no space in specific schools, and
• hiring of staff to develop and offer the virtual, online Learn at Home program.

More information about these areas can be found in our Frequently Asked Questions, available here:  Frequently Asked Questions.

Dear KPR Parents and Guardians:

We want to provide everyone with another update on our continued planning for the upcoming school year.  We appreciate your patience as we work through these many interrelated issues. As you can appreciate, these are complex matters that take reflection and consideration to resolve.

Throughout all, we want to emphasize that our planning supports one central priority, which is safeguarding the health and welfare of students, staff and the community.

To that end, we are sharing today that we have made an adjustment to our secondary school planning model. The details are outlined below for families with secondary students.

We know that everyone is anxious to learn more about our plans for the staggered start to the school year. Once again, our emphasis has been on making our school environments as safe as possible for our students and staff.

For our in-person school operations, this means giving our principals and school staff enough time to:

• realign elementary classroom sizes and staff assignments based on changes resulting from students choosing to stay home for the online school option; parents should be aware that this could potentially mean your child’s assigned teacher may change
• confirm and adjust secondary student timetables, especially for our Learn At Home students
• properly set up and become familiar with our new pandemic-related school practices
• organize classrooms in safe layouts, which includes the moving and storage of a considerable amount of furnishings, desks and other equipment throughout the school.

At the same time, we are also organizing our Learn At Home online school for over 5,300 students. This is a challenging undertaking that requires a significant amount of planning and development with our teaching and administrative staff.

For all of these reasons, we are sharing today that our staggered start will now take place over a two-week period.

This two week period will be as follows:

September 8 – September 11 – Schools remain closed to students. Staff continue preparing school for the new year.

September 14 – September 18 – Student and class groups will attend school on different days to become familiar with classroom and school processes. All students will be in attendance full-time on Friday, September 18.

This two-week period will provide all our staff and students the additional time we believe will be crucial for everyone to prepare learning spaces, and to finalize, understand and be comfortable with, the many new routines that will be a part of the normal school day.

Finalized schedules will be shared with parents through their local school as soon as possible.

We know this will be disappointing to our families and students who are eager to get back to school with all their friends, but we need to take the time to get this right from the start.

Changes to school day structure for In-Person Learning – Secondary students

Our back-to-school planning continues to change and evolve over time in support of student and staff safety.

As we worked through the implementation of our plan and timetabling for secondary students, we realized that our initial structure for the day could be changed and improved to make it better and safer.

The key part of this change is that while students will still be in school all-day, every day, they will now alternate their two subjects every week, instead of every day.

This means that students will take their Period 1 class every day for Week 1. Students will then take their Period 2 class every day the following week. This will continue alternating for the first quadmester.

The following example may be helpful:

We realize this is an extended amount of time for students on each subject. The safety improvements of this model, however, are significant:

• students can remain in a defined classroom for the entire week without traveling to another classroom, similar to our elementary model
• this further limits the number of contacts and touch points for students and staff throughout the day, so that we will no longer have students using two different desks during the same day
• the possibility of schools implementing staggered breaks and lunches for students during the day, so that they can have a break from their classroom; our previous plan was based on students remaining in their Period One classrooms to have lunch.

While our intent with the original school plan was to structure the school day safely for everyone through organized timetabling and limited movement, we feel this plan is a safer and better alternative. Any parents or students who feel that this change may affect their interest in participating in our online Learn At Home program should contact us at kpr_info@kprdsb.ca

In closing, we appreciate your continued patience as we work through these uncommon days in preparation for the new year.

We wish you health and wellness.

Jennifer Leclerc
Director of Education

Is your child eligible for transportation and attending a KPR school in person in September, but won’t be using the bus? If so, please visit https://www.stsco.ca/NotUsingBus.asp as soon as possible to let us know you’re opting out from using the school bus.

You may have seen media reports yesterday regarding the provincial announcement of updated directives for local health units and school boards in ensuring schools remain safe for students and staff.

We are currently reviewing those documents, in collaboration with our local health units, and will be updating our health and safety procedures for all schools to reflect this guidance.

A letter from the Minister of Education outlining these directives is attached here for your information, the highlights of which include:

- Updates to illness protocols to deal with students who become ill while they are at school, including how they will be cared for by staff and provided with personal protective equipment
- The critical importance of parents screening their children every day before school, and keeping them at home if they are ill
- The ways school communities will be updated if a student or staff member tests positive for COVID- 19, and the immediate contact tracing that will begin by local health authorities
- Situations where required classes or cohorts of students will be recommended for testing or sent home, or where the school will be closed until public health officials determine it is safe for students and staff to return.

We know that the health and safety of your children, our students, is your greatest priority. Along with the health and wellness of our staff, we want to assure you that we share that priority.

As mentioned above, we are presently working together with our health units on this newly released guidance document, and will update parents and guardians on our enhanced measures as they are finalized.

 Learn At Home Program

We continue to work on establishing our online, virtual school for over 5,300 students who have chosen this education program. As parents can appreciate, this is a challenging undertaking that requires a significant amount of planning and development with our teaching and administrative staff.

Principals and vice-principals have been assigned to oversee and manage both the virtual elementary and virtual secondary Learn at Home programs. They will be reaching out to families next week with more information about school start-up.

Helping your child become comfortable with mask wearing

One important part of back-to-school routines involves helping students become more comfortable wearing masks. KPR has compiled some tips and videos to help children become more comfortable with putting on and wearing masks. Students in Grades 4 and up are required to wear non-medical face masks when indoors at school, while students in Kindergarten to Grade 3 are encouraged to wear masks in indoor spaces. Please see the attached poster, to support this important part of our back-to-school preparations.

Dear KPR Parents and Guardians:

As the Labour Day long weekend draws closer, we want to take a moment to share with you our excitement in returning to what is our passion, and what we love to do the most – educating your children.

We say this fully understanding that many parents and students are concerned and anxious about what the future will bring. We appreciate those feelings – no one remains unaffected by the events of the last few months – and, in the days ahead, we will do all that we can to support our students in their transition back to school.

We also believe strongly that bringing students together, in person and virtually, is a critical necessity for their overall health and wellness. 

The closures of our schools last spring was a necessary step that we supported, for the health of our communities. The impact of these closures on our students and staff, however, was significant.

From September until March, our students and staff were learning and growing together, in common spaces. Regrettably, from that point in time, life in our communities and schools changed in fundamental ways for us all.

We look forward to taking another step towards our new normal by reuniting students with their peers, and students with our staff, who have missed them.

As I have mentioned, we know that these are uneasy times for families, and that you have understandable concerns for your children’s health.

We have worked with focus and intention to consider all parts of the school day, to make attending school safer for students. As recommended by health authorities, we are making many adjustments to the school day. These include:  

• The way our students enter our buildings and walk through hallways and classrooms each day
• Set-up of desks and classrooms so that students are as far apart as possible
• Keeping classes together in one group with one teacher, as much as possible
• Staggered lunches and breaks for different classes
• Mandatory masks for staff and students in Grades 4 and up, and strong encouragement of masks for Kindergarten to Grade 3 students
• Supplies of hand sanitizer in classrooms and hallways, as well as frequent reminders to wash hands often with soap and water
• A strict health protocol for students or staff who become ill
• Increased cleaning and sanitization of all high touch surfaces, such as handles, door knobs, and faucets, three times a day
• Thorough evening cleaning, including the use of electrostatic sprayers that disinfect all items in large areas, and
• Following all federal and provincial requirements for school bus safety.

Next week, as students begin to hear more from their schools and teachers, we will also share Back to School Information packages with important reminders about the new protocols in place at schools, to keep everyone safe.

Once again, I thank all of our families for your patience and understanding. There have been many changes to our educational programs this spring and summer as we continue to work through the many interrelated issues before us.

I also can’t promise that there won’t be more changes in the days ahead as we adapt to evolving educational and health directives. I can, however, assure everyone that our staff members are an amazing group of committed and caring adults, who have come together in these unprecedented times, to work with purpose and intention to support our students.

We know that no plan is perfect, but we will be tireless in improving and refining our actions and practices each day.

We wish you a joyful start to the school year. 

Jennifer Leclerc
Director of Education

Update for Families of Virtual School Students

We want to thank you for your continued patience and understanding as we launch our Virtual Elementary and Secondary Schools for over 5,600 students in KPR.

Please find below an update for students and families for both the elementary and secondary virtual school.

Virtual Elementary School

Given the overwhelming interest in the virtual school, staff are working as quickly as they can to respond.  The complexity of creating these schools and transferring student information has created technical challenges requiring additional staff and time.

Many parents and students have already been contacted by your child’s teacher. For those that have not heard from your teacher yet, you should hear from them by Monday afternoon.

We trust the following questions and answers will provide you with timely information to support your planning for next week.

Is my child registered?
For those families who completed the “Opt Out Form” in August, please rest assured that your child is registered in the virtual school and has been assigned a teacher.

For those families who did not complete the Opt Out Form because you are new to the board and/or made a decision to attend the virtual school after the August deadline, please know that we working as quickly as we can to add your child(ren) to our school database.

For those families who completed the Opt Out Form in August and have since made the decision to not participate in the virtual school, please know that we are working through a process of removing your child(ren) from our database and transferring this information back to your child’s home school.

When will my child’s teacher contact us?
Once your child’s information is successfully transferred to the virtual school from their home school or a new registration is completed, they will be assigned to a teacher who will contact you about next steps.  Staff are working over the weekend to continue this process.  While we are working diligently to contact families by the end of today, it is possible that your child’s teacher may not contact you until Monday of next week.

What will September 14 to 18 look like?
As you know, all schools in KPRDSB are having staggered entry of students during this week.  This applies to our  virtual school as well.  With students, teachers and parents being new to learning virtually, the plan is for virtual students to attend for increasing periods of time each day as outlined by your child’s teacher.  Your child will not be expected to be online all day until Friday, September 18.   When not online, your child will be assigned work to complete independently.  The focus will be on learning how to use the technology, developing relationships and getting back into the routine of school.

How do I get a device for my child?
Many of you have completed the online survey and already picked up a chromebook.  Should you still need a device, please send an email as soon as possible to: kpr_technology@kprdsb.ca

How do I get technical support for my child?
We have set up Student/Parent Helplines to support virtual students.
Student/Parent Helpline Virtual Elementary School
1-877-741-4577 Ext 3002
Elementary_Helpline@kprdsb.ca

 Who do I contact with my questions about Virtual School?
Please reach out to your child’s teacher with questions or concerns after your initial contact
If you have not heard from your child’s teacher by Monday afternoon, please contact the Education Centre at 877-741-4577, extension 2030.  Your patience is appreciated as we work as quickly as we can to get back to you.

Virtual High School Update (VHS)

We know that a number of students still do not have complete timetables and that some students are having difficulty accessing their KPR online account.  We understand that this creates anxiety given that school starts on Monday.  Please know that the first four days of next week are dedicated to learning about our online learning environment in D2L. 

During this time we will be working hard behind the scenes to resolve all the timetabling and access issues.  No student will fall behind because of timetabling or access issues. 

 How do students access their timetable?
Virtual High School Students should be able to see their timetable in Edsby.  If you are having trouble accessing Edsby because you forgot your username or password please use the following link to access this information. You will need the PIN number that was sent to you via email from KPRDSB. 
https://studentcreds.kprdsb.ca/

If you do not have a PIN number or are still having issues accessing Edsby please call 1- 877-741-4577 Ex 3001

If you need access to technology please use the following email.  kpr_technology@kprdsb.ca 

When will students begin?
Like all schools, the VHS has planned a staggered entry.  The VHS has approximately 1500 students and the staggered entry will allow students to begin by learning how to navigate the online classroom.  The staggered entry schedule is listed below:

Grade 12 Students – Monday, September 14^th
Grade 11 Students – Tuesday, September 15^th
Grade 10 students – Wednesday, September 16^th
Grade 9 Students – Thursday, September 17^th

On Friday September 18^th regular classes will start for all students.  The first priority for students is to familiarize themselves with the D2L environment which can be accessed at the following online address: https://kprdsb.elearningontario.ca/

Students will need their school network username and password to access D2L.  Once they have gained access to D2L there are two introductory modules for them to work through. 

Timetable Adjustments?

We know that there are students who have timetables that are incorrect or who wish to make timetable changes.

Please visit this link to request a timetable change: forms.gle/TLkD74cayh79BzTt7

All courses being offered at the VHS can be viewed by going to the link below.  This will help to inform change requests:  

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JCnMFdIOPLMSl7QaN7A2idVNbDywiSjT_aZv4zredPw/edit?usp=sharing

If your concerns are of an urgent nature, please contact the Virtual High School by calling 705-760-8630. 

How do I get technical support for my child?
We have set up Student/Parent Helplines to support virtual students.
Student/Parent Helpline Virtual High School
1-877-741-4577 Ext 3001
Secondary_Helpline@kprdsb.ca

Unfortunately, STSCO has informed us that the continued, severe bus driver shortage has resulted in more First Student bus routes being cancelled for the rest of this week (to September 18). A full list of affected routes is available at http://www.stsco.ca/driver-shortage-cancellations.asp