Trustees with the Limestone District School Board have approved the use of some surplus money to increase their COVID-19 spending.
The extra money will help maintain the current two models of learning, in class and at home. Director of Education Krishna Burra says around $2.5 million will be used to help staffing, as well as accommodate those virtual learners.
“We are seeing a little bit more demand for families wanting to move over to virtual school and we want to really avoid trying to reorganize our schools and move staff around and change classes when it’s so important to maintain cohorts of students together,” Burra sayd.
“And so this is a way that we can potentially use some of this funding to maintain that flexibility for families and to allow for some additional staffing to be provided to help serve those students and families in a virtual environment.”
A number of school boards across the province, including Upper Canada, have decided to forego exams for secondary students. Superintendent of Education Jessica Silver says that just isn’t the case for the Limestone Board.
“We made the decision to keep our exams because we really want teachers to have flexibility in what they do, so from the beginning we told teachers you can do an exam or you don’t have to,” Silver said.
“You can do a final project or a culminating activity or portfolio, really — whatever works for teachers’ courses. And so we didn’t want to take that flexibility away by making a decision to cancel exams.”
There’s no word on whether the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic School Board will follow suit.