The Abbotsford board of education has praised the actions of staff and students for their hard work during the COVID-19 pandemic and creating a smooth return to class from this fall.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, Abbotsford school district superintendent Kevin Godden released statistics related to the return of class and the pandemic from September to December.
He noted there have been a total of 90 infection notices for that time period, and four cohorts have had to isolate due to COVID-19 exposure concerns. The four cohorts consisted of one elementary school, two middle schools and one secondary school.
“I think it’s amazing,” he said, of the statistics. “There’s 90, but it’s spread over three and a half months and 46 schools and over 110 school dates.”
Godden explained that, in many cases, the isolation is precautionary, and students and teachers transition to online learning for about 10 days. Board of education chair Stan Petersen also noted that there are 15 schools in the district that have had no exposures and, to the best of their knowledge, there have no in-school transmissions of COVID-19.
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Attendance at schools is also only down slightly from previous years. Godden said his records show that, on average, among those students in face-to-face instruction there is only an increase of half a day to one full day per month of missed attendance.
“It’s a measure of confidence that I think parents have that you see those two bar graphs so close together,” he said.
He also revealed that 1,100 students initially signed up the district’s flex program back in September, which allows students to learn from home. The expectation was for those students to return to face-to-face instruction in January.
Godden stated that 453 elementary and 183 middle school students of those 1,100 returned to face-to-face in January. The remainder will continue with the flex program.
The entire board meeting can be watched by clicking anywhere in this sentence.
The district also shared a recent video discussing how they dealt with the pandemic. That video can be seen below.
