Ontario's Schools Will Open Up For In-Person Learning Next Week

Students will get to hear their school bell ring in person soon because Ontario's schools are going to reopen right on schedule next week.

Schools will open back up for in-person learning on January 17, Doug Ford's office confirmed to Narcity, just like the provincial administration promised it would.

Back on January 3, the Ontario government extended students' return to their classrooms in response to pressing concerns of the transmissibility of the Omicron variant in the province.

"Putting these targeted and time-limited measures in place will give us more opportunity to deliver vaccines to all Ontarians and ensure everyone has maximum protection against the virus," Premier Ford said in the January 3 announcement.

Before then, schools were originally set to open on that same day but were first delayed to January 5 in order to give them a chance to prepare for increased health measures.

A Toronto Star source previously hinted that high schoolers would have gone back to school before elementary school students due to higher vaccination rates among teenagers, which is no longer the case.

Some of Ontario's teacher's unions, like the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers' Foundation and the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, wrote open letters to Ford, where they expressed their frustrations over the health measures that were put back into place and how the provincial government failed its students.

Narcity reached out to the Minister of Education's office for further comments but did not immediately hear back before this article was published.