Thorncliffe Park Public School, first site of Ontario’s asymptomatic school testing, closes as cases climb

The Toronto school that’s the first site of the province’s voluntary mass asymptomatic testing program, has closed as cases climb.

East York’s Thorncliffe Park Public School is dismissing all students until at least Dec. 9, wrote principal Jeff Crane in a letter to parents and guardians on Thursday. Students and staff will not be allowed to enter the building until at least that date.

“As you know, Toronto Public Health (TPH) is continuing to investigate the 26 COVID-19 cases at the school. To allow them time to finish their investigation and to perform additional voluntary COVID-19 testing, they have advised that, based on the current situation, all students and staff at the school be dismissed,” he wrote.

The move to close comes after three teachers walked off the job Thursday. Jennifer Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers of Toronto said almost half the student body at the school is now in isolation. With 24 students and two staff members testing positive, everyone is “walking on egg shells,” she said.

The school, near Don Valley Parkway and Millwood Road, is in a neighbourhood that’s been hard hit by . Asymptomatic testing was completed Monday, with more than 500 kids tested, out of a student body of 750. The province announced in the COVID hot spots of Toronto, York, Peel and Ottawa last week, as a way to get a better handle on spread in schools.

Brown said earlier Thursday that the number of cases at Thorncliffe is a concern. It’s been a “revolving door of cases” there, she said, since around Oct. 24 when an outbreak was first declared, and there have been 41 cases since the start of September. Eighteen classes and about 348 students are in isolation, along with 27 teachers, she said.

Brown believes cases in schools are being underestimated, as many children have mild COVID-19 symptoms or none at all.

The spread of the virus in schools has been a hot-button issue, with officials insisting they don’t seem to be drivers of transmission, while some experts, parents and teachers argue there’s not enough data to know the full picture.

Brown said Toronto Public Health has not been transparent about contact tracing, and how they determine which schools to close. She wants to keep schools open in general for students’ well-being, but they need “the tools” to be safe, such as smaller class sizes and more funding for ventilation systems.

“This is a pandemic why, are we nickel-and-diming the health and safety of students? It’s unacceptable.”

Toronto District School Board spokesperson Ryan Bird said it’s “hard to speculate” on whether more staff will walk off the job at other schools as testing is rolled out. “It really comes down to an individual feeling that they think it’s unsafe,” he said.

“They’ve initiated this process this morning, the ministry of labour is involved, and we’re obviously trying to answer as many questions as we can to allay some of these concerns,” he said Thursday morning over the phone on his way to the school before the decision was made to close it.

Toronto Public Health spokesperson Dr. Vinita Dubey said in an email before the closure was announced that the agency continues to work with school boards to ensure protections are in place at schools, including daily screening and targeted testing.

“Decisions on whether or not schools should stay open are based on many factors including how many cases are related to the school, how many of the cases could have been acquired or spread in the school, and how well the school is implementing protective measures,” she said. “We also provide advice and recommendations to our local school boards to inform the school boards’ decisions on class and school dismissals.”

She added that “it is also important to remember that not all COVID-19 cases that are related to schools got their infection at school.” The agency does contact tracing in schools, but has still not resumed wider contact tracing in the community. It stopped contacting the close contacts of positive cases outside of outbreak settings in October, citing overwhelming case numbers.

Asymptomatic testing will also be carried out at the TDSB’s nearby Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute and Valley Park Middle School, as well as Lester B. Pearson Collegiate Institute in Scarborough. schools have also been selected: St. Fidelis, St. John the Evangelist and Chaminade College. York Region is targeting 30 schools, including those that don’t already have a problem with cases, to get a baseline.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce told reporters Thursday that the province began asymptomatic testing “in the highest-risk regions of the province … with the aim to identify” cases and reduce transmission among students, staff and their families.

“That’s why we launched, it,” he said, noting the high turnout for the Thorncliffe testing.

When asked about teachers there refusing to work, he said he appreciates their concerns, and that “the ministry of labour has a job, an independent review to ensure that staff, wherever they are working, are in a safe environment … and I have confidence in the process.”

He said public health makes the decisions on keeping schools open, but comparing Ontario to the rest of Canada or jurisdictions around the world, “we are still able to keep our schools open, and safe.”

But New Democrat MPP Marit Stiles, her party’s education critic, said the government should begin a comprehensive program of asymptomatic testing.

The province needs to track how COVID is being transmitted in schools, and testing in the four hot spots is not enough, because “basing them only in areas with the highest infection rates is really missing the point,” Stiles said in the legislature Thursday.

“I can assure you that no parent or guardian whose child has been exposed to COVID at school is comforted by this minister getting up in (the legislature) every single day to say, ‘Hey, relax, the kids are all right.’ Tell that to the families at Thorncliffe.”

May Warren is a Toronto-based breaking news reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

Libaan Osman is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star’s radio room in Toronto. Reach him via email:

Kristin Rushowy is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: