The Nunavut Association of Municipalities (NAM) is urging the Government of Nunavut not to order teachers back to the territory, or to work, and to keep Nunavut schools closed until the beginning of September.
photo courtesy of the Department of Education
This position was endorsed during a meeting of NAM’s board of directors on Tuesday.
“Although the NAM executive board has made it very clear that our communities don’t want schools to reopen until September due to the Covid-19 threat, we also wanted to point out that we support teachers throughout Nunavut and we look forward to them returning when it is safe to do so,” reads a statement from the organization.
NAM encourages Nunavummiut to maintain social distancing and to avoid unnecessary interaction to keep Covid-19 at bay in the territory. The news release cites Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s April 10 advice to “stay home, only go outside when necessary and stay two metres apart,” and notes that Nunavut Health Minister George Hickes extended the territory’s state of public health emergency on April 2.
Close to 2,500 signatures have been gathered as part of an online petition that calls upon government leaders to stop teachers from flying back to Nunavut from the south, regardless of self-isolation centres set up in southern cities.
Thank you.
It is about time for Nunavut to think ‘big picture’ and focus on the health and safety of their Nunavummiut. Thank you for redirecting us all to what is critical in this situation.
Education is important, and it’s currently continuing to happen remotely. This case needs to be put aside and out of focus as this is not more important than lives of Nunavummiut- which is at risk right now.
Let’s hope the big picture starts to come into focus before it’s too late.
I think they could use this time out of school to teach them the Inuit way of life before it becomes impossible to try and survive on store bought food and trying to rely on the government too much, hopefully by now they will be able to listen to their Inuit way teachers by now because it is getting to expensive to live on store bought foods and if it gets any worse so many might not survive. Let’s keep the Inuit traditional way of life ALIVE !