TORONTO -- NDP leader Andrea Horwath brought a school bus to Queen's Park on Monday to demonstrate concerns about physical distancing once students go back to school next month.
“We’re asking Mr. Ford to step up to the plate,” Horwath said at a press conference. “Not to just cross your fingers and hope for the best but to step up and act to make sure that classrooms are safe.”
Students have been out of school since in-class learning stopped in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Premier Doug Ford and his government released its original $309 million back-to-school plan in June but teachers, parents, and school boards have all raised concerns about it, particularly around elementary class sizes and physical distancing.
Horwath argued that the government is not providing enough funding for school boards to implement appropriate safety and physical distancing measures, including proper ventilation, sufficient supplies and personal protective gear and more buses and bus drivers.
“The bottom line is if we’re three weeks in front of the opening of schools and the Ford government hasn’t done anything to try to source extra buses then it’s inevitable that kids are going to be cheek by jowl inside those buses,” Horwath said.
The government’s plan includes twice daily cleaning of all school buses, and $40 million to hire additional drivers and provide them with personal protective equipment.
The plan also said there will be assigned seating on all buses, with students from the same household or students in the same class cohort at the secondary level required to sit together.
But Horwath said the measures are simply not good enough.
“This planning by the school boards has become that much more difficult because the government of Ontario, the Ford government, is trying to do it on the cheap,” she said. “He’s trying to send kids back to school on the cheap.”
To demonstrate what appropriate physical distancing measures should look like on buses, Horwath did a show-and-tell with the media and had student cutouts sitting on the bus.
On one side of the bus, it showed a regular scenario of two or three students per seat, which Horwath said would not be safe especially without mandatory masks.
The other side had one student per seat with a mask on, which she said offers a safer option to reduce the spread of the virus.
Students are set to head back to school on Sept. 8.
