{"id":4776,"date":"2021-12-16T11:44:14","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T15:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=4776"},"modified":"2021-12-16T11:44:14","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T15:44:14","slug":"school-holidays-will-start-early-due-to-staffing-shortages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2021\/12\/16\/school-holidays-will-start-early-due-to-staffing-shortages\/","title":{"rendered":"School holidays will start early due to staffing shortages"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A

Photo Ed Halverson<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Students across Nova Scotia will enjoy an even longer December holiday as the province announced the break will start Friday instead of next Tuesday the 21.<\/p>\n

Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Becky Druhan says the decision was not based on public health direction but is designed to relieve staffing pressures.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re very grateful and pleased that Nova Scotians are following the public health directions to self-isolate when they\u2019re close contacts. But some of those people are people who are in the school system and that means they\u2019re unavailable to come in to teach, to support the school or to drive buses, if those are their roles. So, as a result of the numbers of people who are on self-isolation due to being close contacts, there are challenges with operating school,” said Druhan.<\/p>\n

The department announced just last week that students would return to class two days later than planned, on January 6.<\/p>\n

The reasoning was to allow families to monitor students for COVID-19 before they return to school, for public health to assess COVID-19 in the province, and staff to undertake further professional development to support their teaching, while also allowing more time for families to book vaccination appointments for their children.<\/p>\n

Druhan says the extra time will allow public health officials to make the best plans for a safe return to school.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons for that is about giving public health some additional time to be able to make a determination about the epidemiology and what the situation is and to ensure we have that time to have really good decisions around what measures need to be in place coming back.,” said Druhan. “And so public health will be taking the time over the holidays to make those assessments. We\u2019ll be working very closely with them to make sure that whatever new measures need to be in place when we come back in January are ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement to extend the school break comes as the province reports 178 new cases of coronavirus.<\/p>\n

E-mail:\u00a0edhalversonnews@gmail.com<\/a><\/strong>
\nTwitter: @edwardhalverson<\/strong><\/p>\n

To listen to the broadcast of this story, press play below.<\/em><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/School-Holiday-extended-Dec-15-21_mixdown.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students across Nova Scotia will enjoy an even longer December holiday as the province announced the break will start Friday instead of next Tuesday the 21. Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Becky Druhan says the decision was not based on public health direction but is designed to relieve staffing pressures. \u201cWe’re very grateful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[400,20,139,508,509],"class_list":["post-4776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-becky-druhan","tag-covid-19","tag-public-health","tag-school-holidays","tag-staffing-shortage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4779,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776\/revisions\/4779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}