TORONTO -- A former teacher has created a morbid display on her front lawn protesting the Ontario government's back-to-school plan and she doesn't plan on removing it anytime soon.
Niagara Falls, Ont. mother Andrea Zakel-Farro told CTV News Toronto on Thursday that she spent about a week creating the display, called the "Halloween classroom," which she says is meant to provide an urgent message to the government.
Zakel-Farro erected multiple signs, skeletons and tombstones on her lawn with messages about her back-to-school fears, including some that read "second wave cemetery" and "kids are not Lecce’s lab rats."
"I whipped it together within a week, with a hammer, nails and paint I had already," she said. "The slogans were the hardest part but when I get passionate angry words come to me."
Zakel-Farro said the display, which has been up since Monday, has been mostly met with positivity but there have been some who have complained.
"Some people think it’s too morbid but I just tell them to get off my lawn," she said. "I'm just acknowledging the reality."
She said that even if she does get more complaints, the display will remain up until at least after Halloween or until the government makes a back-to-school policy change.
Zakel-Farro, who is now home schooling her eight-year-old son, said there wasn’t even a debate about whether she would send him back to school. She said not having a cap on class sizes makes it too dangerous for her child to go back.
"I don’t trust the variables in the classroom," she said. "I don't trust my child from removing his mask all day long … it's not even a conversation for me to talk about him going."
She said that by keeping her son home she also feels that she is doing her part to keep class sizes smaller.
Premier Doug Ford has been battling with the province’s teachers’ unions and is facing a public backlash over his government’s back-to-school plan, which some educators say fails to incorporate essential public health measures.
The province had asked school boards and teachers to arrange classrooms in a way that allows for physical distancing by removing unnecessary furniture and placing desks at least one metre apart in elementary schools and at least two metres apart in high schools.
But across the province teachers have taken to social media, posting photos of what some classrooms really look like versus what the government says they do.
In those posts teachers say it’s not possible to achieve even a one-metre distance between desks due to the classroom sizes and the number of desks needed for each student.
While the Ford government allowed school boards to dip into their reserve funds to hire additional teachers and reduce class sizes, many boards, including the Toronto District School Board, warned earlier this month that it will still be impossible to guarantee two metres of physical distancing in its classrooms.
Ford has dismissed the concerns and called Ontario’s back-to-school plan the "safest" in the Canada. He also slammed the teachers' unions saying they are not cooperating and are looking for problems.
