The COVID-19 pandemic continued to loom large at the latest Living Sky school board meeting held virtually on Wednesday.
Director of education Brenda Vickers provided trustees with an update on two items of importance. One was the provincial government announcement that Saskatchewan youth 12 and over would start to be vaccinated in the near future.
Vickers told the trustees that their Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction Cathy Herrick was attending a health meeting that day at which time it was expected more information would be shared about the plan.
As well, Vickers provided an update on graduation guidelines. The guidelines had come out last week from the province and in her written report Vickers indicated the guidelines are still tight, including recommendations for virtual or live streamed events, or alternatively either drive-in or outdoor ceremonies.
Vickers expected that her hunch was that they would hear on May 17 that more students and family members will be allowed to join the ceremony if it is outside.
That is assuming the provincial picture improves for case numbers improves. At the moment, the guidelines call for outdoor ceremonies to be limited to 15 grads and 30 guests; if there are fewer than 15 students, just two guests are allowed per grad.
The trustees also heard a facilities report from their facilities manager Brad Ferguson, and COVID-19 was a major factor throughout his update. He noted COVID-19 was 鈥渂asically at the forefront of everything we鈥檝e done.鈥�
Ferguson reported they spent a lot of time making sure schools had an adequate
supply of PPE 鈥� including hand sanitizer, gloves, masks, and the proper equipment like disinfectant sprayers.
Ferguson also reported that they used their COVID-19 contingency funds to purchase a full year鈥檚 worth of new MERV 13 filters for all of their schools. New bipolar ionizers were purchased this year as well, and the combination of both should improve air quality in the classrooms and keep the schools mostly virus-free.
In other facilities news, a roof replacement project has started at Kerrobert which expects to be done in late July, and they had expected to start at Leoville as well, but there has been a delay getting wood required for the decking, so that is not expected to be completed until the end of August.
