Keeping schools open for face-to-face instruction remains a priority, but parents are expected to be able to enroll their children in “face-to-face synchronous distance education” beginning in September 2021. “Post-pandemic education will continue to use online learning to providecontinuity of learning,’reduce learning loss,’ and give students access to a broader range of courses,” “he” said. He said the proposed plan would “negatively impact students, increase inequality, lower standards” and bring us closer to privatizing public education. “Ontario Secondary Schools Federation President Harvey Bishop was more moderate in “his” criticism, but called for evidence that online learning benefits students. After a year of school closures and intermittent online learning, the newspaper reported that Education Minister Steven Lecce is considering a bill to make “distance learning” a “permanent part” of the public K-12 system. The Ministry of Education’s draft document, published March 24, 2021 in the Toronto Globe and Mail, has once again sparked a heated debate in Ontario over the expansion of online courses. Did it promote “parental choice” or did the tip of the iceberg lead to the “privatization” of public education? Whatever the logic, the “boogeyman” of online learning is back, a year after the first round of controversy was overcome by COVID-19 and its abrupt shift to domestic distress. The Globe and Mail article on e-learning in Ontario mentions in many comments how e-learning schools and other online services have benefited students struggling with: bullying, special needs, unique talents and other circumstances. In the case of Ontario, about 400,000 of the province’s 2 million students, or 20 per cent, will be learning online by the 2020-21 school year. Integrating online learning into the regular school curriculum seemed radical, frightening and disruptive in February 2020 on the eve of the pandemic. While face-to-face instruction is preferred by most students, there is a strong case for expanding the supply of online courses. Ontario’s largest school district, the Toronto District School Board, not only publicly condemned Minister Lecce in February 2020 for proposing mandatory online courses, but also commissioned a survey of teachers, parents and students that was clearly aimed at torpedoing such a plan. Integrating online courses into the regular curriculum makes perfect sense, given what we now know about the possibility of massive disruptions interfering with class time. What have we learned since the pandemic that disrupted education? Keeping kids in school should be a top priority, as it far outweighs even the most engaging live and video lessons compared to online alternatives. Governor Doug Ford’s original plan to require high school students to take four online courses in grades 9-12 has met with great resistance. Taking full online courses and regularly participating in programs based on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Webex platforms will become increasingly commonplace and eventually a normal expectation for students, teachers and parents everywhere. The primary mission of schools is to provide an academic education, but education today includes a much broader range of core learning support and psychosocial services.