Grade 6 Student Gurbani Kaur Sarai concludes in her letter about going back to school in September, saying it is dangerous to go back to school. Some students may have been going places that are not safe to be and can therefore infect an entire class and maybe even an entire school. The flu season only makes it worse to send your child back to school. Now, we are all counting on Dr. Henry to make the right decisions for the people of B.C. We all know that going back to school is risky, therefore we should switch to a combination of online classes and small sized actual classes. If students are expected to go back to school in a pandemic, then our schools and teaching environments should be safe and secure.

Dear Editor:

I am an eleven year old elementary school student. This upcoming Fall, school is starting for all Canadian children including myself. Fall is also the start of the flu season. We are also in the middle of a second wave of covid cases and the combination of going to school with a large number of students, a rise in covid cases, and it being the start of the flu season makes it  dangerous for all students and teachers. My older siblings are in high school and have a great system compared to elementary schools. It is not safe to go back to school.

            This fall is not the right time to start going to school. It isn’t safe for children to be going to school for five days a week because we don’t know where other students have travelled, what they have touched, if they have been sick, or have been in contact with someone who had or has covid-19. If we go back to school full time it will help the coronavirus spread to other citizens in Surrey and BC. In any pandemic you want to prevent things from happening. In order to prevent the spread of covid we shouldn’t be going to school 5 days a week. Some people have grandparents at home or have family members with respiratory illness and are therefore at a higher risk of getting the virus. We should be preventing the spread of this virus by not going to school full time.

            Every year during the flu season is when most people get sick. The schools are extra careful during this time of the year. Now there is a global pandemic going on, and we are going back to school. Global pandemic + Flu season + Going back to school= Various people getting sick! This is something that makes me anxious to go back to school because someone may be next to me and just have the flu or cough and I (and everyone else in the class) will think they have covid. However, if they have covid, it will be very easy to spread when during flu season as people tend to their nose, mouth and eyes and then leave germs all around the classroom. Flu season can be dangerous on its own and we need to prevent innocent people from getting sick.

Some say that wearing masks will reduce the spread and help keep safe, but Dr. Bonnie Henry said that masks don’t have a big effect on preventing the spread of covid-19. In fact, Canada.ca mentioned that masks do not prevent the spread of the virus. If you want to prevent the spread of covid-19 you have to wash your hands frequently and social distance. So, if we are not socially distancing in the classroom, then how can we prevent the spread?

            I live in B.C. and Dr. Bonnie Henry has done a great job with keeping things in control. Around May of this year, Dr. Henry mentioned B.C. being at plateau and that we are in control of what’s happening. B.C. was one of the best controlled provinces in Canada. With the recent spikes that have happened in Kelowna and other places, we are doing worse than we did before. If we can’t control our province, how are we going to control schools in these conditions?

            My older siblings are in high school and their schedule seems better than mine. All students attending high school in B.C. are going to be going to school twice a week. The other days they are working online or on study blocks. The students in elementary school are going five days a week. If you are a parent to children that are going to different schools, it’s hard for you to go to work and manage the different days your children are going to school. Either elementary schools should have the same schedule as high schools, or everyone goes online until its safe. At the end of the day, we want to ensure that no one gets sick during the process of going back to school.

            In conclusion, it is dangerous to go back to school. Some students may have been going places that are not safe to be and can therefore infect an entire class and maybe even an entire school. The flu season only makes it worse to send your child back to school. Now, we are all counting on Dr. Henry to make the right decisions for the people of B.C. We all know that going back to school is risky, therefore we should switch to a combination of online classes and small sized actual classes. If students are expected to go back to school in a pandemic, then our schools and teaching environments should be safe and secure.

Gurbani Kaur Sarai
Surrey Grade 6 student