(Brockville) – The Upper Canada District School Board announced this afternoon that, following consultation with the two district health units in its region, it is cancelling all “community use” activities in its schools from November 2nd to 16th. The cancellation of those activities is the result of an increased rate of absenteeism of students attributed to the influenza outbreak, both the seasonal flu and H1N1.
Community use activities include Girl Guide’s meetings, community sports activities, craft fairs, etc.
Programs that are offered on a regular basis in schools during school hours are not cancelled.
“During this time when we are challenged with the flu season, our priority is to ensure we have staff available to instruct and support students during the school day and within clean and safe environments, outlined Director of Education David Thomas.
“We are reducing after-school activities to allow custodians to meet the demands for surface and regular cleaning and reduce the load on our office administrators so that they can monitor attendance, have time to communicate effectively with parents and the community.”
Schools will be limiting their after school activities to scheduled school league sporting events. Also, they will postpone school dances scheduled for after-school hours, as well as clubs, activities and exhibition sports and games.
Also, to ensure that we have as many staff available to instruct and support students, the Board is postponing Professional Development activities that occur within the school day and which take staff away from their assigned school, and either postpone off-site meetings or use teleconferencing to conduct such meetings.
These decisions will be reviewed on a regular basis and changes will be communicated to all schools and the media prior to November 16th.
School principals still have discretion regarding the cancellation or postponement of such as activities as field trips.
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For further information please contact:
Terry Simzer
Manager of Communications
613-342-0371 ext. 1119