Lethbridge School Division sign. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Lethbridge parents favour “normal” and “blended” models for schools this fall

Jun 25, 2020 | 11:22 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A new survey has found parents in Lethbridge have differing opinions of how school operations should be handled in the upcoming year.

In early June, the Lethbridge School Division launched a Parent Survey for the 2020/21 school year in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This was in response to the provincial government announcing that they were looking at three possible scenarios.

• Scenario 1: Students would return to near normal operations and attend school in person. This is seen by Alberta Education as the preferred model
• Scenario 2: There would be a “modified schedule” where students would be in smaller classes some days and at home on others
• Scenario 3: Students would continue at-home learning as they did this semester

A total of 6,588 people took part in the survey.

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Many said they would be very likely to send their children to school if the province chose to proceed with Scenario 1 (77.82%), but slightly more felt comfortable with Scenario 2 (86.67%).

Board Chair Clark Bosch says he was not surprised to see the numbers turn out the way they did, because “we’re best at regular operations.”

Scenario 3 was by far the least-preferred with 57.92% saying they would not be comfortable with this at all.

Under an at-home learning model in Scenario 3, some of the “high concerns” expressed include their child missing out on learning from teachers (67.56%), their child’s access to full curriculum delivery (60.61%), their child’s mental health (49.43%), the ability of parents to balance their work commitments and supporting their child’s learning (52.63%), and their child’s level of physical activity (37.06%).

“Three months of being at home, the kids tend to wane a little bit as well, so I’m not surprised at all that Scenario 3 is too much of a change in the way we do business at citizens.”

Bosch said it was interesting to see the number for mental health as it reinforces all of the things schools provide that are not just “books”, such as socialization and fitness.

The exact model that schools will have to go with will be chosen by the provincial government, not school boards, no later than August 1.

Transportation was also a sticking point for parents.

Without distancing protocols in place, just over half were “very likely” to send their children on the bus, but with distancing protocols, that rose to almost three-quarters.

A little over 20% would likely not be able to arrange alternate forms of transportation.

With distancing protocols, Bosch thinks they should not have any problems getting at least those 20% of students on busses, but of course, the exact details of how this will work have not been sorted out yet.

The full Parent Survey results can be found here.