OTTAWA -- The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has had to revise its back-to-school plans for high school students, after being told by the Ministry of Education that students must be in class at least 50 per cent of the time this fall.

Parents and students were upset when the board unveiled the adaptive model for secondary school students attending in-person classes full-time this fall. Under the plan, students would attend in-person classes for 150 minutes in the morning, then return home after lunch for an approximately 75 minute "Zoom-style class." That means students would only be attending class in-person 25 per cent of the time this fall.

Updated information on the high school schedule for OCDSB students is now expected by this coming Wednesday, but families only had until Sunday night to decide whether they were sending their kids back to class or whether they were keeping them online.

The OCDSB told CTV News on Monday that they do not have figures for how many parents are choosing online learning versus in school learning this fall. The board said it is reviewing the decisions parents have made and will provide that information when ready.

Trustee Mark Fisher shared some figures Sunday morning.

Speaking on CTV Morning Live on Monday morning, OCDSB trustee Sandra Schwartz said new directives from the province so close to the return to class are a source of confusion and difficulty for board staff.

"The province should have made these decisions far earlier," she said. "If they made these decisions in June, parents would have been so much more comforted. School boards would be far further ahead in their planning. We can't keep turning this massive ecosystem. We can't just shift that on a dime and assume that money and new protocols announced last week can just shift things overnight.

"The province has done a fantastic job on COVID so far, but when it comes to education, they've entirely and patently failed."

The government unveiled its back-to-school plan in late July, which included a requirement that high school students would be in class for at least 50 per cent of instructional days.

The OCDSB plan revealed last week effectively only had students in class 25 per cent of the time.

Speaking on Newstalk 580 CFRA's "The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll", Schwartz said staff consulted with Ottawa Public Health and with teachers' unions and found that 50/50 was not feasible.

"The staff looked at it, they said, 'How do we do this safely?' They consulted public health, they looked at the collective agreements, and realized we can't do 50/50 and now they're having to go back to the drawing board," she said.

"I certainly don't blame staff. They've been trying to do the best they can with what they have. They've been behind the scenes, talking to the province saying, 'This isn't going to work for us.' They fully intended 50/50, but when they looked at the collective agreements, when they talked with public health, they realized they couldn't deliver what they had promised out of 50/50, given the circumstances, and they couldn't do it safely."

The four major teachers' unions in Ontario released a joint statement Thursday alleging that the province’s back-to-school plan violates its own government’s occupational health and safety legislation.

They allege the provincial plan fails to provide adequate health and safety protections such as smaller class sizes, minimal measurable standards for ventilation in schools, and mandatory masking for younger children.

On the subject of ventilation, Fisher told CTV Morning Live on Monday that work on upgrading ventilation systems across the board would not be complete by September.

"There's no way all the work is going to be done by September," he said. "We're going to start as soon as we can but that work is going to have to continue into September and likely into October. It's just a lot of work."

Schwartz said, of the $50 million announced by the province last week for ventilation upgrades, only about one to two million would be available to the OCDSB.

"On an average year, not a COVID year, we spend upwards of $10 million on upgrades for ventilation," she said. "One to two million may do one or two, maybe three schools."

Both Fisher and Schwartz said they were sending their children back to school in the fall, having weighed the risk of contracting COVID-19 against their child's mental and social health. Both trustees opted out of school bus transportation but said they live within walking distance of their children's schools.

Online learning better than in the spring

Both trustees said they are confident the online learning model will be better than what was offered in the spring.

"All trustees had a chance to look at the new guidelines from the ministry that were sent out late Thursday. They're substantive. Obviously, our board has to try and make them work but I, at least, had a baseline comfort that if our board adopts anything close to what these guidelines are, I think it's going to look at lot better than the springtime," Fisher said.

Schwartz said that while she believes online learning will be superior, she still has questions that depend on the enrollment numbers and the updated back-to-school plan for high schoolers.

"At this point, we're not even sure if we're going to have virtual schools, which means our kids aren't necessarily all together with their cohort, or whether we're going to have mini classes within each school or family of schools so at least the kids see each other and their friends," she told CTV Morning Live.

"We're still trying to figure out how some of the online learning is going to work," Schwartz told Newstalk 580 CFRA. "Again, we received directives from the province last week […] trying to turn this institution on a dime and figure this all out within a couple of days is a completely unreasonable expectation."

With files from CTV News Toronto's Phil Tsekouras and Sean Davidson.