Band and choral programs will be resuming in the South East Cornerstone Public School Division, starting Feb. 1.
The division made the announcement on its Facebook page Friday morning. The programs were not offered during the first five months of the school year due to restrictions associated with COVID-19.
Aaron Hiske, the superintendent of education for Cornerstone, said Cornerstone has been closely monitoring Reopen Saskatchewan guidelines in an effort to figure out how to safely offer band and choir programs for both elementary schools and high schools.
“We felt we could offer programming with reduced risk within these guidelines, and we’re pleased to offer this to our students,” said Hiske.
Once the school division saw some leeway, it met with the conductors to discuss how the programs could look. Superintendents of schools have been working with principals for a resumption of programming in school buildings.
Changes released on Jan 11, including a reduction in the required distance between performers from four metres to threes, allowed Cornerstone to resume programs.
“That four-metre barrier was really difficult for us,” said Hiske.
In addition to the three metres of distance, they can have up to 30 students in a classroom at a time. All students must be wearing masks when not playing, and for brass instruments, there needs to be filters on the instrument bells and absorbent pads on the floors.
“We’ll have to break those band instructing units into smaller chunks, so maybe instead of seeing 30 kids for a 45-minute session, it might be 15 kids for two 20-minute sessions, to get the program up and running again,” he said.
Not only will they be able to offer band and choir programs in any school that had them before, but Hiske said they believe they can have some of the classroom music that had to be shelved due to the pandemic.
“The closest we had to offering some pieces is one of our schools was doing some work virtually with an extracurricular course,” said Hiske.
The band and choral teachers had been reassigned to other duties during the first half of the school year so that there wouldn’t be layoffs. Some of them provided much-needed substitute teaching coverage.
The instructors will spend the last week of January setting up programs and classrooms to accommodate restrictions, so that they’re ready by Feb. 1.
“Band and choir are important across South East Cornerstone. It’s always been foundational to what we offer students,” said Hiske. “It was a very difficult decision to make the decision to pause those when the guidelines just simply wouldn’t let us offer quality programming. So we’re very excited, and parents and students will be excited as well to be able to offer these for our students again.”
A long-time band instructor in Estevan and at other schools, Hiske said it was important to offer these programs once again for students.
“In these trying times, the arts can certainly give us some comfort, so I’m looking forward to continuing to support our teachers and our band directors and choir directors to provide some opportunities for our students,” said Hiske.
If everything stays the same within the public health orders, Hiske hopes there can be some form of performances this spring, including band concerts, choral performances or a school musical or play. Once the weather is nice, they might be able to be outdoors, or they could have virtual performances.
The school division is constantly monitoring the provincial regulations, and will be ready if those change.
