Some Ontario parents opting for 'pod schools' to avoid pandemic disruptions

A physically distanced classroom is seen at Kensington Community School amidst the COVID-19 pandemic on Tuesday, September 1, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio

TORONTO -

When it comes to pandemic safety at schools, some parents are voting with their feet, turning to so-called ‘pods’ with other students from like-minded families.

The experience offers perceived safety and stability for those who can afford it — but educators are worried about what this means for public education if the thousands of children the pandemic seems to have pushed from public school don’t come back.

“For my kids, I need stability,” said Ilana Katz, who says she’s still reeling from having to be a mom and a part-time teacher for much of the last school year. “Every single announcement where they said kids weren’t going back to school was a full-out panic.”

Katz’s solution this September is to enrol her kids in a ‘pod’ school, joining five others and hiring a teacher in what is technically a homeschool arrangement. The cost is $1,000 per child, per month.

“We feel like it’s the best case scenario for us,” said Katz, who is a speech language pathologist. “A teacher and six children will come and learn in my basement. At least they can have some stability that way.“

She says her chosen school did 10 pods last year and is now up to 25. School districts say it’s too early to get figures for how many families are making that choice this year.

Last year, enrolment dropped in Toronto by more than 3,000 children in kindergarten. In 2019, there were 17,419 students in junior kindergarten; that dropped by 2,291 to 15,128 in 2020, a change of about 13 per cent.

In 2019, there were 17,760 students enrolled in senior kindergarten, which dropped by 770 to 16,990 in 2020, a change of about four per cent.

The TDSB said it believes much of this is children delaying starting school because kindergarten isn’t mandatory. A recent New York Times article on ‘The Kindergarten Exodus’ said more than one million children didn’t attend kindergarten last year, continent-wide.

But the effect may extend to other grades: In 2019, TSDB figures show there were 17,869 children enrolled in Grade 1; in 2020, that dropped by 543, or about three per cent, to 17,326.

Jennifer Brown, the president of the Elementary Teachers of Toronto, told CTV News Toronto that she believes that if parents are leaving, it’s because the measures taken by the provincial government during the pandemic haven’t given them confidence.

“If this government was really serious about doing what’s best for the students and workers in education and education sectors, they would lower the class sizes so there could be physical distancing,” she said.

The TDSB says it is ready, pointing to provincial masking standards, and HEPA filters in all the schools. Some 53 per cent of schools have mechanical ventilation, nine per cent have passive ventilation, and some combination of both in 38 per cent.

“We have older buildings in Toronto. Passive anything is not good,” Brown said, wondering whether that would be enough to stop the spread of COVID-19 in a building where students were gathering for assemblies and singing in choir practice.

“I believe they have wilfully underfunded public education and this pandemic has destabilized public education and moving people out — and private industry is taking over public education. That’s not what’s best for Ontario,” she said.

The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario is still discussing mandatory vaccinations for educators, something the Ontario Medical Association called for this week.

Educator Prachi Srivastava said schools need to update their curriculum to accommodate learning disruptions caused by the pandemic.

“We want to look at an integrated approach. It needs to be in the curriculum and safety, and we’re not seeing that,” she said.

Katz wants her children to go back to the public system when the pandemic is over, but she worries that not everyone will want to return.