Kingston, Ont., school boards are making plans to offer students some form of remote learning if Canadian Union of Public Employees education workers go on strike next week.
However, the type of learning that’s being offered will depend on how long a potential strike lasts.
The clock is still ticking after Wednesday’s declaration by CUPE that if a deal can’t be reached with the province by Monday, educational support workers will walk off the job for the second time in two weeks.
Parents, students, educational support workers and school boards are now waiting anxiously to see if a deal can be reached in time to avoid strike action.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Education called on school boards to prepare for a possible strike.
“We are in the process of communicating and we’ll continue to communicate with families up to Sunday, maybe even early Monday depending on what happens,” said Limestone District School Board superintendent of human resources Susan McWilliams.
During the recent two-day walkout, local schools shut down.
Now, the Ministry of Education is asking school boards to continue with in-person learning where possible and otherwise switch to online learning if the strike does happen.
McWilliams said while she remains hopeful a work stoppage can be avoided, if it does happen, they’ll move to a plan that would see students learning on their own schedule.
“Asynchronous (learning) would be work being presented to students through a learning management platform or email or paper packaging,” she said.
The Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board is making similar plans.
The director of education said if the strike drags into Wednesday or later, things will need to change.
“If this extends, like, say now we’re talking Wednesday or Thursday, we have a plan to deploy technology and to eventually do synchronous learning where the teacher’s engaging with students online in real time,” said Dave DeSantis.
However, both representatives of the school boards say the best-case scenario would be for the two sides to come to a fair deal and avoid any further interruption to learning.