After consultation with the Chief Medical Officer of Health and the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District, the Department of Education has approved the availability for full-day early learning and child care for school-age children during the two week “circuit-breaker” period ending February 26, 2021.

Regulated child care services that are already licensed and approved for this age group can send a written or email request to their regional office to accept school-age children.

There are some conditions for this approach, including:

• Services are provided to the children of a child care service’s existing clients who are required to leave their home and report to their place of work under Alert Level 5;
• Parents availing of this service must pay their parental fee for the full day of child care directly to the service; and
• Current clients not availing of the full day of child care will not be charged to hold their space. The Department of Education will reimburse for the after-school or before and after school parental fee only for those children if they are not in attendance.

It is important to note that school aged children will be permitted to bring their devices to their child care service to allow for online learning, and children without their own devices will be provided with a device by their school or school district, as previously communicated. Child care services are not expected to ensure that school aged children are taking part in their regular online or offline learning, but services may choose to do so if they believe they can accommodate it. In some cases this may not be practical, as services may have children from various grades and from different schools. Child care services are also not necessarily set up to support public Wi-Fi, nor are they equipped to assist students in using their own individual devices, troubleshooting technical issues or logging into Google Classroom.

While the department would prefer that all school aged children participate in online learning, the decision has been made to permit this temporary two-week practice without requiring online learning, which recognizes the individual challenges raised by some essential workers.

Any parent taking this route should contact their school administrator to notify them and to discuss possible arrangements for offline learning after-hours. If the Alert Level 5 measures extend beyond this two week period these measures will be re-evaluated.

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Media contact
Tina Coffey
Education
709-729-1906, 687-9903
tcoffey@gov.nl.ca