About 50 parents and children protested in front of Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod’s office Thursday, the fourth march in Ottawa in the past week to demand the provincial government reopen elementary and secondary schools.
The parents are upset by the decision to keep students learning online at home for the remainder of the school year. In-person classes — except for a limited number of students with complex special-education needs — were cancelled on April 19.
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The parents join paediatricians, public health experts, children’s hospitals and some doctors in asking the Ontario government to allow schools to resume in-person learning, if only in regions where case counts are low.
Premier Doug Ford has said he doesn’t want to risk another surge of COVID-19 caused by schools, saying they were a major source of outbreaks in April before they closed.
The Ontario COVID-19 science advisory table had recommended that in-person classes could resume on a regional basis.
On Thursday, the science table reported that COVID-19 cases and the number of people in hospital had dropped sharply in Ontario.