By Abby Zieverink

school restrictions lifted

GPPSD seeing significant decrease in COVID-19 cases as final restrictions get lifted

Mar 1, 2022 | 5:00 AM

As of March 1, all remaining COVID-19 requirements have been removed entirely from schools across the province.

This means masking will no longer be required by anyone in the schools, or on school busses.

In addition to the removal of masking, Grande Prairie Public School Division Deputy Superintendent James Robinson says they are also able to remove the cohorting mandate for K-6 students.

Robinson says although cohorting did limit flexibility within the schools, students most likely won’t notice too much of a difference.

“Some of our practices around recess and some of our combined gym classes may change a little bit as we are not required to keep students in defined cohorts but the impact will be quite minimal to what a student will experience typically to what we are experiencing now.”

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As of February 14, the mask mandate for students was lifted across the province. Robinson says since then, they have seen a significant reduction in COVID-19 cases in their schools.

“January and into early February was pretty busy with COVID, but our numbers started to drop off as did the province,” he explained.

“We typically see between five and seven new cases identified per day in our schools, which is not a significant number if you consider we have a combined total between staff and students of about 9,500 people in our schools every day. It was certainly much higher than that earlier in January, but that decreased.”

Robinson says although there are no more provincial health restrictions required in their schools, there are some things the division learned throughout the pandemic that some schools will look at maintaining.

He tells EverythingGP this includes ways how students enter and leave the schools.

“Prior to the pandemic, we generally would have one or two doors open in a school and everybody would come through those doors and one, it’s a little bit of a slow process but two, it can lead to some conflict and full boot rooms and those sorts of things.”

“So we anticipate that some of our schools will maintain some of the good things we learned throughout the pandemic to help enhance the experience for students.”

Robinson adds the pandemic also helped strengthen the use of technology for students and staff, ultimately helping improve their education.

“It forced us to take a leap forward in how we integrate technology into our teaching and our learning practices in our classrooms, in a way that without the pandemic we wouldn’t have been able to do,” he said.

“When students were a part of the work from home order, it made us become more flexible in our use of technology. A lot of those skills that students and staff gained throughout the pandemic will be maintained moving forward post-pandemic.”