Restrictions gone, but some ideas from pandemic remain in school division

Students are back in the Portage la Prairie School Division and although things are mostly back to normal, some aspects of pandemic life still remain.

Darryl Patterson is the new principal at Yellowquill School and says some inititatives from 2020 still make sense today.

"There's no requirements that we have to do COVID-wise, although the division has decided to keep up with some of the extra cleaning that the custodial staff will do, because that's just good hygiene," says Patterson. "There will be masks available for anybody that wants them, but it's not a requirement. We have hand sanitizers in rooms and hallways for people to sanitize as they choose, which again is just good hygiene, and maybe cut down on some of the regular colds."

He says they have eliminated requirements such as social distancing and cohorts. However, they did notice that there were some benefits from that system that work in 2022.

"There are some things that we're going to keep, more organizational things, that we found worked well with COVID," says Patterson. "It helped move throughout the building in a more organized way, our entrance and exit lines, for example."

The first day of school for the Division was September 8th.