With April Break behind them, students and teachers across Ontario are back online as classes resume today.

But for how long remains to be seen.

The province hasn’t put any kind of timeline on this round of virtual learning, but Deb Crawford, Director of Education for the St Clair Catholic District School Board, is still optimistic.

“Our schools are a reflection of what’s going on in the broader society,” Crawford says. “In our own area, the  cases are not as high as some place across the province. It’s April, we still have part of April, May and June left, and we really do want our kids back in school and our teachers back in classrooms.”

John Howitt with the Lambton Kent District School Board firmly believes schools are safe places to learn, and he remains hopeful that kids will be back in the classroom before long.

“We are not at the end of the school year by any stretch of the imagination, in fact our secondary students are starting their final two credits,” Howitt says. “We’re very optimistic the students will be back. We subscribe to the philosophy of last to close, first to reopen.”

Meantime, the first day back online got off to a bumpy start for some, thanks to a Rogers outage affecting most Rogers and Fido customers in Ontario.