Ontario's education minister says new safety measures being implemented for Monday's return to in-person learning in schools, include enhanced testing.
In an interview with Blackburn News Thursday morning, Stephen Lecce said all schools will have access to voluntary asymptomatic testing, adding they have the capacity to run 50,000 tests weekly.
"In a school there's a case that comes up and they just want to send in additional asymptomatic testing just to be sure it hasn't spread to the classroom, to that child or to the other two or three classes that that class may have interacted with throughout the day," said Lecce. "That type of nimble, efficient, rapid response will be available for our schools to protect them."
Lecce said they've hired about 3,400 net new teachers and are about to hire another 900 or so over the coming weeks. He said teacher union demands that class sizes be capped at 15 to ensure proper physical distancing, in reality, would require the hiring of some 35,000 net new teachers.
"I think it's just totally a false narrative, you know 35,000 teachers, from where? We can't find 4,000 but we know there's about 900 more to come on line, we've provided an additional $65 million for the hiring of more educators and to support more staffing, more custodians. We've done a lot in the context of staffing, more than any province by any measurement," he said.
Lecce announced Wednesday afternoon that face-to-face learning will resume in most areas including Sarnia-Lambton February 8.
New protocols include mandatory masking being extended to include students in Grades 1 to 3.
-With files from Sue Storr