Hundreds of Ottawa students still waiting for first day of virtual class

Roughly 600 students in Ottawa's largest school board are still awaiting word on when they can begin their virtual learning experience, a month after the first day of virtual classes began for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB). 

Virtual school started on September 18, but back in August, parents made the decision whether their children would attend a brick-and-mortar school or learn online. In September, the OCDSB had about 13,000 elementary and 4,000 secondary students signed up to learn virtually.

The backlog was recently pegged at just under 2,000 students, but the superintendent of instruction says the board has chipped away at that waitlist.

“We've been able, over the last week, to move about 950 elementary students into our Ottawa-Carleton Virtual,” explained Shawn Lehman. “We had initially a waiting list of about 600 students [for secondary school] and at this point in time, we are down to about 200 students.”

Lehman acknowledges that there remains roughly 400 elementary students on the waitlist, but half are currently receiving instruction at a brick-and-mortar school, while the other half were once enrolled in class and have decided to wait for a spot in the online classroom.

According to the OCDSB, one major barrier to reducing the online wait list has been the need to hire more French teachers.