Superintendent Dan Lowndes says the functional closure happened today at Wells Barkerville Elementary school.
“Due to staff and student illness we did have to make the decision to functionally close Wells Barkerville Elementary for today. We can’t comment whether it was COVID-related, but definitely there is illness in the community. We do have plans in place and we are actually currently communicating as we speak with the parents about our plan for Monday.”
Lowndes says the school, which has 18 students, will be open on Monday.
He says the cafeteria at Quesnel Junior School was closed due to illness yesterday. (Thursday)
“Again thank you to the team at the school for some nimble planning. Pizzas were ordered and we had two volunteers come in and help to distribute that to students at the last minute, so a bit of a testament to being flexible, and doing what we need to do to support kids.”
It is open today.
Lowndes says they were able to react quickly in both of those situations due to the planning that they did earlier in the year.
“This is why we started that planning back in January, hoping that we never have to use the plans to address functional closure, but that if we did ever have to confront this that we were able to communicate as quickly as we could and we’d have to deal with the minimized impact.”
Lowndes says the pizza was plan B, and was a replacement for the items that the students would normally purchase.
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