With schools across Manitoba being let out for three weeks due to COVID-19, many school divisions have had to scramble and put plans in place.

Portage la Prairie School Division Superintendent, Todd Cuddington, says they’re following the directives from Manitoba Education.

“We’re working with our staff to create some type of learning platform, whether it’s e-learning or through packages that will be going home and have started to go home just to provide some degree of continuity. Because this is such a fluid situation, we will be more or less keeping to the three-week time frame until we have further direction from the province.”  

Cuddington says he’s experienced a school closure similar to this when he was teaching abroad during the second Gulf War. He says they were able to deliver e-learning to the students.

The province has advised them to go down the internet learning avenue, but that brings a challenge.

“The truth of it is that across this province we don’t have equal access to bandwidth and so, those living in rural and more isolated parts of the province, it’s not as easy to deliver instruction that way. This division’s done a fairly good job of setting up our schools with high-speed internet through fibre optics, but that’s not going to help students isolated at home.”

They haven’t been looking too far ahead because the situation is rapidly unfolding and constantly changing. The Division's focus has been the period leading up to spring break and the week following.

Cuddington says parents should be reassured that the Division has tried to communicate as best they can to reduce anxiety amongst students and families.

“We stepped up all of our cleaning routines to ensure there’s no risk. We should also state probably the most important thing at this point is that there are no reported cases of COVID-19 in any of the schools in Manitoba. the steps that the Manitoba Government is taking right now are out of an abundance of caution.”