Earlier today, the Discover Estevan newsroom posed the question to the public of what they thought of schools in the south east returning to in class learning today, and many shared their thoughts.

Parents of south east Saskatchewan: what are your thoughts on students returning to the classroom this morning?

Posted by DiscoverEstevan.com on Monday, April 26, 2021
Most parents who commented were happy to see their kids heading back to school, but there was a few who had some reservations about the idea. One of those parents was TerriLynn Carter who has three kids all in Grade 8 and above. The youngest is still going to school in Macoun while the other two are at the Estevan Comprehensive School, and after having gone through isolation on two seperate occassions due to close contacts, she thinks that there is better courses of action that they could take.

"I think it's the isolation that is driving all these kids crazy. I don't understand why we'd want to put our children back in that situation. At least if they are doing online schooling, they get a chance to do their schooling and then maybe go down the street and play with a friend for an hour, come back home and do some more schooling. At least they don't have 30 other students in the classroom taking a chance on catching it again and being in isolation not being able to doing anything at all."

While there is options for kids to do their schooling online, there isn't always teachers online to help that the students that may be needing assistance. This is an issue for Carter as she feels like her kids are being shoehorned back into the classroom if they need help.

"When we had looked into it, they said that there was no one online to help the students, so it's not like in-class learning online. The assignments will be posted online and your child can do those assignments, but in order for them to get the help that they need, they have to be in class.

On the other side of that, Karolina Tam has a reservation or two about her kids heading back to school but she was preparing to be keeping their kids home for the rest of the school year. Their family has one school aged child going to Spruce Ridge School which will not have students return to the classroom until next week, while the other is still in daycare.

Tam has had to take time away from her job to make sure her kids were looked after and had the resources to learn, and the few times she has had to go to work have meant hiring babysitters, but that hasn't been all that easy this year.

"It's been really tough. We actually moved to Estevan two years ago and I put in an application for cooperative daycare and it took them over a year to get back to me for two of my kids. We have a two and a half year old son and my daughter is in grade one, so it's been tough because you have to make sure your kids are in good hands."

Based off the comments and the parents that did speak with us, most people are happy to see their kids getting back to normal schooling, but there is some things that they would like to see more communication on.