March 22, 2020

CHILD CARE, TVO, ONLINE EDUCATIONAL HELP

TORONTO — Families should check with their child care centres Monday after the province said Sunday it will allow some to reopen to support health care and frontline workers during this COVID-19 outbreak.

And the province is also providing online courses for students stuck at home, as well as using its TVO channel to augment those studies.

The province will also use its TVO channel to provide more educational support as families are self-isolating.

This as elementary school teachers have reached a tentative agreement on the weekend to end their strikes with a one per cent raise and a smaller class size agreement. The deal still needs to be ratified next month.

See more on Friday’s continuing education announcement below.

Ontario says in a release that it plans to exempt certain child care centres from the order to close all licensed child care centres pursuant to the state of emergency declared earlier this week. This initiative is being done in partnership with service system managers and First Nations partners.

“We need to help our nurses, doctors and frontline care workers to be able to focus on protecting the health and well-being of all Ontarians,” said Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health.

“By allowing select child care centres to open their doors during these challenging times, our province’s courageous frontline workers can rest assured knowing that their families are also being looked after.”

Health care and other frontline workers, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, firefighters, police, and correctional officers, will be able to access safe, local emergency child care. These child care centres will be required to follow existing health and safety requirements and have a plan in place should any staff, children or parents be exposed to the virus.

“During this unprecedented situation, we need to do everything we can to ensure our health care and other frontline staff have the support they need to continue to work,” added Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education.

“At the same time, we need to protect the safety of the staff and children at these centres. For that reason, we are putting strict measures in place, such as restricting the types of centres that can re-open and keeping the number of children in any one centre low.”

Once emergency child care centres open, a list of locations will be made available on ontario.ca/coronavirus.

CONTINUING EDUCATION:

Ontario schools will be closed from March 14 through to April 5 in an effort to keep Ontario’s students safe from COVID-19.

On Friday March 20, Ontario launched the first phase of Learn at Home and Apprendre à la maison, a new online portal that will provide resources for families so students can continue their education while schools are closed due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation.

Visit Ontario’s website to learn more about how the province continues to protect Ontarians from COVID-19.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Learn at Home

TVO

TFO

Email Mark Clairmont at mark@muskokatoday.com

Or news@muskokatoday.com

Celebrating 25 YEARS of ‘Local Online Journalism’

Follow him at Twitter @muskokatodaily

And on Facebook at mark@muskokatodaily.com

And on Facebook at mclairmont1

Email news@muskokatoday.com