There might be 17 days left of summer, according to the calendar, but Whistler students' summer break has officially come to an end.
As usual, the Sea to Sky School District's (SD48) 2022-23 school year kicks off on the Tuesday following Labour Day, which this year falls on Sept. 6. The good news? Students won't spend their first day of school stuck in a classroom for hours on end.
Whistler elementary school students attending Myrtle Philip Community School or Spring Creek Community School will start at 8:30 a.m. before being dismissed at 9:30 a.m., while Whistler Secondary School students in Grades 9 to 12 will be back in class from noon to 2 p.m. Grade 8 students will start their school day at 8:50 a.m. and end at 11 a.m.
Meanwhile in Pemberton, both Blackwater Creek Elementary School and Pemberton Secondary School students' first day will take place from 8:30 to 10 a.m., while Signal Hill Elementary School classes begin at 8:45 and end at 10 a.m.
"As we near the start of the 2022-2023 school year, I also want to take a moment to welcome back our returning staff, families, and community partners. And, a huge welcome to those families joining us for the first time," wrote SD48 superintendent Chris Nicholson in a letter to families, published in the district's Back to School package. "Thank you for entrusting us with the education of your child. Our staff are truly amazing and we look forward to getting to know you and doing our very best for your child."
Nicholson encouraged parents to attend the district's first board meeting of the school year, scheduled to take place next Wednesday, Sept. 14, where staff will discuss "our plan for the year ahead and [go] over other interesting information," he wrote.
SD48's Regular Board of Education meetings are typically held at the school board office in Squamish at 6 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month during the school year. Meetings will also be steamed live on SD48's YouTube channel. (Links will be embedded under the 2022/2023 Board Committee Meeting Agenda Packages on the district's website.)
SD48 parents and caregivers are also invited to download the School News app by Edlio to keep up-to-date on Sea to Sky schools' news feeds and calendars.
Two-and-a-half years into COVID-19, B.C.'s school communicable disease guidelines mirroring public health guidance
Students breathing a sigh of relief about loosened COVID-19 restrictions this fall can rest assured they'll be breathing in fresh, clean air.
Across the corridor, schools' air handling units have all been updated to MERV-13 filters ahead of the current school year. (The acronym stands for "minimum efficiency reporting value.")
Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, B.C.'s Ministry of Education and Child Care will continue to provide supplemental funding to school districts for ventilation upgrades. That commitment includes a $48.4 million investment for 97 new ventilation upgrade and improvement projects in 2022-23, on top of the $11.9 million in federal funding provided in January 2022 to equip classrooms with standalone, high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration units. The province previously funded 84 ventilation upgrade and improvement projects for B.C. school districts through a $44.5 million investment in 2021-22, and 78 new ventilation upgrade and improvement projects through a $33.5 million investment the year before.
According to the province, the Ministry of Education "has worked with education partners to update the communicable disease guidelines for kindergarten to Grade 12 schools, based on recently updated public health guidance."
Those guidelines encourage students and staff to continue self-monitoring for any symptoms of illness, including before heading to school.
Additionally, "Wearing a mask will continue to be a personal choice, and that choice will be supported and respected," the province explained in a news release. "Schools will continue to have masks available for those who want to wear one."
SD48's current COVID-19 Communicable Disease Plan says Sea to Sky schools will notify public health agencies "if extraordinary numbers of students and/or staff absences are reported," and encouraged its students and staff "to ensure they are up to date on all recommended vaccines for other communicable diseases, including COVID-19 vaccines."
The district is leaving it up to school principals to ensure staff, parents, caregivers, and students are aware they should not come to school if they're feeling under the weather. According to the plan, any members of the school community who test positive for COVID-19 "should follow the guidance on the BCCDC website as to how long they should self-isolate. Following those guidelines, they can return to school when they no longer need to self-isolate as long as symptoms have improved, and they are well enough to participate in regular activities."
The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control currently instructs individuals who have tested positive for the virus to isolate for at least five days since symptoms began, or five days from the test date for those who did not experience symptoms. The agency said people can end isolation following this five-day period as long as any fever has resolved without the use of fever-reducing medications like acetaminophen or ibuprofen, and as long as their symptoms have improved.
While all of SD48's curricular and extra-curricular programs and activities may resume as normal, individual schools are "encouraged to share evidence-based information and promote opportunities to be vaccinated in partnership with public health and local Medical Health Officers," the plan added.
As Nicholson told families in his back-to-school letter, "It looks like COVID-19 is in the rear-view mirror now, and we are more or less back to normal. Please keep looking after yourself and others by following all of our health and safety guidelines."
B.C. public schools expected to welcome more than half a million students in 2022-23
According to British Columbia's Ministry of Education and Child Care, the province's kindergarten to Grade 12 education system will welcome approximately 572,906 funded full-time equivalent (FTE) students to B.C. public schools this September for the 2022-23 school year, pending final enrolment count. That represents an increase of 1,730 FTE from the most recent school year, the province stated in the release. Additionally, there are about 89,000 B.C. students who attend independent schools.
The average class size in B.C. public schools during the last school year was 22.5 students, which was up by 1.2 per cent compared to 2020-21, according to the ministry, but down from the 23.5 class size average recorded during the 2015-16 school year.
Broken down by grade, B.C.'s average public school class sizes in 2021-22 were:
- 22.7 in Grades 8 to 12
- 24.1 in Grades 4 to 7
- 20.0 in Grades 1 to 3
- 18.1 in Kindergarten
In the 2021-22 school year, B.C. counted 1,583 public schools and 371 independent schools.
Based on the above student counts, across public and independent schools in 2021-22 there were:
- 82,786 students with special needs in the province, 4,484 more than the previous year;
- 73,983 Indigenous students in the province, 584 fewer than the year before;
- 69,475 English Language Learning students in the province, 214 more than the year before;
- 6,415 students in the francophone school district, Conseil scolaire francophone (SD 093), two more than the previous year; and
- 53,797 French immersion students in the province, 157 fewer than the year before.
