schools ontario shut down

Such action is urgently required to protect the lives of school staff, students and their families from the raging COVID-19 pandemic. Sharing information about the struggles of educators in schools and other educational institutions with a Canada-wide and global audience, including news about infections, protests, and other initiatives. While well in excess of $650 billion has been funneled into the financial markets, banks and big business to guarantee the wealth and profits of the super-rich, working people have been provided totally inadequate makeshift assistance and forced back into unsafe jobs. Because the pandemic is global, the working class must provide an international solution. Thus, the politicians and media try to paint educators as selfish for wanting to shut down unsafe schools, cynically invoking the hardships that working parents must bear. Keeping schools open for in-person instruction is viewed by them as vital, because then parents can be compelled to return to work, churning out profits for big business. If a deadly third wave is to be averted, educators and the working class as a whole must take matters into their own hands and intervene as an independent force. “Potential contacts from classrooms and buses will be notified and the contact tracing is currently being managed by Lambton Public Health while Walpole Island Health Centre staff [are] performing community vaccination.”. In fighting to ensure that schools do not serve as vectors for the deadly pandemic, education workers are fighting on behalf of the entire working class. Walpole Island First Nation Council posted the announcement on social media on Friday afternoon, stating that students from Bkejwanong Kinomaagewgamig and Anishinaabeg Kinomaagewgamig were dismissed as a precautionary measure. The Cross-Canada Educators’ Rank-and-File Safety committee will work in solidarity with existing rank-and-file committees in the United States, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Australia and elsewhere, sharing our experiences and with a view to mounting a common struggle. When asked last September what steps the OSSTF would take to prevent the Ford government from implementing a school reopening plan that the union itself charged placed teachers’ lives in jeopardy, Bischof exclaimed, “If the question is whether we’re planning some illegal job action, the answer is a flat out no.”. To do so, they must build new organizations of struggle: rank-and-file committees, independent of and in political opposition to the pro-capitalist trade unions. File photo courtesy of © Can Stock Photo / crampinini. According to government data—data which undoubtedly underestimates the gravity of the situation due to inadequate testing and contact tracing—more than 30,000 students and school staff have been infected with COVID-19, and at least one Ontario educator has lost her life. Studies from Canada and around the world have shown that schools are important vectors for the transmission of COVID-19. The Easter long weekend is bringing changes to COVID-19 testing site and vaccine clinic hours on Prince Edward Island. Behind educators’ backs, they have negotiated and helped implement totally inadequate safety measures, while appealing to provincial governments to “reopen schools safely,” an impossible feat during a raging pandemic. “There is no known or suspected transmission of COVID-19 having occurred within the school and for that reason, an outbreak has not been declared under the School Outbreak Management Plan,” read the post. The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Canada was announced on January 25, 2020, involving a traveler who had recently returned to Toronto from travel in China, including Wuhan. The explosion of COVID-19 cases and deaths produced by their reckless drive to reopen the economy ultimately forced governments to re-impose some lockdown measures at the end of 2020, including a return to online instruction in some provinces. The struggle for an end to in-person learning must be linked to the call for a halt to all nonessential production with full wages guaranteed for all workers, and the provision of free and safe childcare for health care and all other essential workers. Fighting to link the struggles of teachers with other sections of workers, like meatpackers, service employees, health care workers, and autoworkers, who all confront similar life and death threats from the virus. The union bureaucracy’s attitude was epitomized up by Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) President Harvey Bischof. When a rank-and-file educator presented a motion in late January demanding an emergency meeting of his 10,000-member CSQ local to discuss what needed to be done about the unsafe conditions in South Shore Montreal schools, the union leadership ruled it out of order. The COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario is an ongoing viral pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Submit A News Tip ... COVID-19 concerns shut down Walpole Island schools. Los Angeles educators must learn the lessons of the sellout by the Chicago Teachers Union! The Cross-Canada Educators’ Rank-and-File Safety Committee proposes the following demands to teachers throughout the country as a basis for current and future struggles: These demands are based not on what the ruling class and its media mouthpieces claim they can afford, but on what is truly necessary and scientifically possible to protect lives and meet human needs. All decisions regarding school openings and closures must be overseen by rank-and-file committees formed by workers and parents, in consultation with scientists of their choosing and without the involvement of school boards or unions! They are all the more ineffective in schools that due to decades of capitalist austerity are generally crowded, dilapidated and poorly ventilated. The science of the pandemic supports teachers’ concerns over the dangers of school reopening—Part one. As more schools in Ontario shut down due to COVID-19 outbreaks, some front-line physicians are calling for all schools to close. Comprehensive financial support to families so they can provide for the well-being of their children! They are as follows: Friday, April 2: Testing sites and vaccination clinics across the province are closed, and the vaccine appointment phone lines will not be staffed. As the second wave crested in late December and early January, there was a spike in cases of the COVID-19-linked and potentially fatal Multisystem Respiratory Syndrome. Yet provincial governments of every political stripe, from Ford’s right-wing Tories in Ontario and Quebec’s CAQ regime to BC’s New Democrats, are adamant that schools remain open, and have continuously sought to downplay the threat to educators, students and their families. The B.1.1.7 variant, or the U.K. variant, seems to travel better in kids than previous versions. The resources to establish high-quality online learning and provide everyone with adequate health care and workplace protection exist in abundance. In many regions, the total number of school and daycare outbreaks exceeds those in workplaces. This will include: The situation faced by education workers in Canada is similar to what workers around the world are experiencing. Similarly, the country’s governments have refused to fund the most basic public health measures, such as the provision of air filtration devices and air conditioning systems, to make schools and other buildings safer. Whether it is in Brazil, Germany, France or the United States, teachers are being sent to the front lines of the pandemic under dangerous conditions. The government extended online learning for elementary schools until at least Jan. 25 — until Feb. 10 for hotspot zones in and around Toronto, as well as Windsor, Ont. “We’ve had more cases that have gone to the ICU, who had cardiac involvement, who needed treatment.”. But no sooner did COVID-19 cases begin to fall back from a level triple last spring’s “peak,” than they rushed to scrap all restrictions, with reopening schools once again the first order of business so that parents could be pushed back to work. The Cross-Canada Educators’ Rank-and-File Safety Committee has been formed to spearhead and coordinate the fight for the building of such committees in every school and educational institution. The provincial government announced plans on Friday to move to Phase Two of its vaccination plan next month. Elsewhere, Quebec allows up to 250 people inside a place of worship as long as they can maintain a two metre distance from others. It is first and foremost a political struggle. The claim, promoted by the political establishment and corporate media, that COVID-19 doesn’t represent a serious health risk for children and young people is a lie. In this they have had, and continue to enjoy, the unstinting support of Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government. The principal task of these committees will be to mobilize educators and their supporters to take all measures needed to protect school staff and students’ health and lives. The post also said that test results are pending for a second student. More than 7,500 Canadian schools have recorded at least one case of the disease and there are currently more than 2,000 active outbreaks. A study conducted by Dr. Simona Bignami of the Université de Montréal and Dr. John F. Sandberg of George Washington University found that it was Montreal children who infected their parents last fall, not the other way around, transforming Canada’s second largest city once again into a COVID-19 epicentre. Even the federal government’s own chief medical officer acknowledges that a third wave of the pandemic is rapidly developing, fuelled by new, more contagious variants of the virus, and that it threatens to be even more deadly than the two previous waves. In the half-dozen instances where rank-and-file workers responded to COVID-19 outbreaks at their schools by walking off the job, the unions isolated their struggles and quickly shut them down. Residents of Quebec City, Levis and Gatineau will also see schools close and non-essential business shut down for at least 10 days in a bid to bring soaring local case counts back under control. Despite our best efforts, essential measures such as wearing a mask and physical distancing are impossible to systematically apply and enforce. The following statement was unanimously adopted at a meeting Sunday of the recently organized Cross-Canada Educators’ Rank-and-File Safety Committee. But as Caryn … Ignoring World Health Organization recommendations, workplaces and schools were reopened without massive investments in the chronically under-resourced health care system, including in developing systematic mass testing, contact tracing and surge capacity. Moreover, the long-term consequences of COVID-19 for both children and adults are unknown. This when teachers everywhere face essentially the same conditions in confronting a virus that can only be properly contained on a global basis. However, they are monopolized by a fabulously wealthy elite that has profited off the mass infections and death and considers spending on pandemic prevention a drain on its wealth. According to the latest update posted on Walpole Island First Nation’s website, there are four active cases in the community. An Amazon warehouse that was ordered to shut down last week due to a major COVID-19 outbreak is also being investigated for potential labour violations, the Ontario … In taking up this critical demand, rank-and-file educators’ committees will provide a lead to the growing opposition among health care, industrial, construction, and logistics workers and other sections of the working class over the ruling class’ ruinous response to the pandemic. Far from opposing the ruling elite’s homicidal back-to-work/back-to-school policy, the trade unions have aided and abetted it. There are at least four schools in Oakville with three or more active coronavirus cases, according to both of Halton region's school boards Tuesday (March 16). Provide full wages for all affected workers so they can shelter at home until the pandemic is over! We have formed the Cross-Canada Educators’ Rank-and-File Safety Committee to fight for the immediate closure of all schools across the country. The earliest a discussion about workers’ response to the pandemic could be held, insisted the Syndicat de Champlain executive, was two months hence. At every point in the pandemic, Canada’s governments have prioritized the selfish class interests of the capitalist elite over saving working people’s lives. Students from two Walpole Island elementary schools have been dismissed and will ... Chatham, Sarnia and Midwestern Ontario. COVID-19 shuts down 17 schools in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon as 434 students, teachers now infected with virus 16 schools closed … Students from two Walpole Island elementary schools have been dismissed and will learn from home next week after a student tested positive for COVID-19. All this underscores that the fight against the pandemic is not primarily a health issue. Ontario is preparing to move into Phase Two of our #COVID19 vaccination distribution plan in April, with over 2M doses to be delivered by the federal government by the end of March. BlackburnNews.com is a network of local newsrooms providing timely, accurate multimedia coverage of Southwestern and Midwestern Ontario. The politicians are hostile to a science-based approach to containing and halting the spread of COVID-19, because they represent a corporate elite for whom profits, not working people’s safety and lives, are the priority. In Ontario, the unions, bowing to an Ontario Labour Relations Board decision, are telling teachers to file grievances over unsafe COVID-19 working conditions on an individual school or even class-by-class basis. Schools The following approach will apply to publicly-funded and private elementary and secondary learning, with the exception of First Nation and federally- operated schools: • Elementary and secondary school students at publicly-funded schools would participate in remote learning from January 4-January 8, 2021. “We’ve seen more cases in the past weeks and the children are more sick,” explained Dr. Marie-Paule Morin, a pediatric rheumatologist at Montreal’s Sainte Justine Hospital. Invest billions of dollars in the education system to strengthen online learning, protect public education from privatization, and provide students, families and educators with the necessary social and psychological support! End all in-person learning, from elementary school through to universities, until the pandemic is brought under control! International Committee of the Fourth International, Sign up for the WSWS Educators Newsletter, Cross-Canada Educators’ Rank-and-File Safety Committee, Canada’s governments lift COVID-19 restrictions despite warnings of deadly third wave, UK Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee opposes unsafe school reopenings. Saturday: Regular hours for testing sites at Slemon Park in Summerside and Park Street in Charlottetown. Exposing the complicity of the trade unions in facilitating the return to school and their opposition to any and all independent action by educators. All workers know that the concept of “class bubbles” is smoke and mirrors. The Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit reported 11 active cases of COVID-19 on Friday. Scientific studies from around the world—including one that showed school infections played a major role in incubating and spreading Montreal’s second wave—have demonstrated that in-person instruction is an important vector in the spread of COVID-19. Earlier this week, Walpole Island Health Centre started asking residents 65 years of age and older to call the centre for information about the COVID-19 vaccine. This only serves to underline that the struggle of educators and school support staff is inseparable from, and must be consciously tied to, the struggle to mobilize all working people to fight for the measures needed to halt the spread of COVID-19. We direct a special appeal to students at all levels of education, and to teachers, administrative, janitorial and food-service workers at colleges and universities. These education workers, many of whom labour on precarious contracts with virtually no job protections, share the same fundamental interests with teachers in the context of the reckless reopening of college and university campuses alongside schools. As always, the ruling class seeks to frustrate working class opposition by trying to pit workers against each other. The full social power of the working class can be mobilized only to the extent that the artificial barriers promoted by the political establishment are swept aside, and workers are unified behind common demands and a political program. In-person learning is expected to resume at the schools on March 17. https://t.co/sW75W9BADC pic.twitter.com/ZLgMG8qfdB, — Christine Elliott (@celliottability) March 5, 2021. Band members 50 years of age and older were advised on Wednesday to call and book an appointment. Receive news updates and information on the fight against the unsafe reopening of schools. Across the province, 1,250 new cases were reported along with 22 deaths related to the novel coronavirus. To realize this program, the Educators’ Rank-and-File Safety Committee will wage an aggressive campaign over the coming weeks and months. A key element in the trade unions’ sabotage of working class opposition to austerity over the past four decades has been their systematic efforts to quarantine these struggles on provincial lines and subordinate them to the pro-employer, provincially-regulated labour relations and collective bargaining systems. All teachers, workers, parents and students interested in joining our struggle to mobilize education workers to halt the spread of the pandemic and save lives should contact us at: cersc.csppb@gmail.com. The teachers’ unions in Ontario, Quebec’s CSQ, the BC Teachers’ Federation, the Alberta Teachers’ Association and their counterparts across the country have systematically suppressed opposition to in-class schooling from teachers and parents. Nearly one in every four schools in Ontario has a reported case. We are founding our committee on a cross-Canada basis because it is critical for workers—English- and French-speaking, immigrant and indigenous—to be united in political struggle. During the first year of the pandemic, Canada’s 40 billionaires saw their combined wealth rise by over $50 billion. Phase Two will focus on vaccinating populations based on age and risk. The ruling elite’s ruinous mishandling of the pandemic—a health crisis that was both foreseeable and foreseen—has already resulted in 885,000 Canadians being sickened with COVID-19 and more than 22,000 deaths. This has to stop! Thus, the politicians and media try to paint educators as selfish for wanting to shut down unsafe schools, cynically invoking the hardships that working parents must bear. 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