Despite struggling to keep schools open and high levels of staff absenteeism, trustees on the Thames Valley District school board voted down a motion to bring in a mask mandate, taking their lawyer’s advice to leave the decision up to the province.
Despite struggling to keep schools open and high levels of staff absenteeism, trustees on the Thames Valley District school board voted down a motion to bring in a mask mandate, taking their lawyer’s advice to leave the decision up to the province.
The vote against making masks mandatory at schools took place at a special board meeting Tuesday night when trustees were briefed by the medical officers of health for Middlesex-London and Oxford and Elgin counties on the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic and what measures the board could take.
A shortage of staff forced the board to close two London elementary schools for a day last week, the first time schools closed since early February in the pandemic’s fifth wave fueled by the Omicron variant.
Ontario lifted mask mandates in most indoor settings including schools on March 21.
“We have a high absenteeism rate – the highest we’ve had during this pandemic – we had two schools closed last week because of a staffing shortage,” school board chair Lori-Ann Pizzolato said. “We don’t want to close schools. We want to make sure schools are safe.”
Pizzolato said she’s frustrated.
“As a chair I support what the trustees want, but as trustee, Lori-Ann, I want all the tools to keep our school safe and open.”
Education director Mark Fisher said roughly 10 per cent or about 1,000 Thames Valley staff are currently on leave, the majority due to illness or quarantine.
“We are significantly challenged by the number of absences,” he said. “We are struggling to keep our schools open on a daily basis.”
More than a dozen schools in the board are reporting absences of more than 20 per cent.
Both Alex Summers, medical officer of health for Middlesex-London, and Ninh Tran, medical officer of health for Southwestern Public Health, said the spike in COVID cases isn’t likely to subsidize anytime soon.
“I am anticipating elevated levels through April and into May,” Summers said.
The health unit said Monday the level of COVID-19 in London and Middlesex is as high as any seen during the pandemic, with the exception of the Omicron wave, and the risk of becoming infected remains very high.
Both Summers and Tran said they strongly supported masking in indoor settings but advised trustees to figure out the legalities prior to implementing it.
London trustee Corrine Rahman proposed the motion calling on the board to establish a mask mandate, but it was defeated.
A top scientific adviser for province said last week wastewater monitoring suggests Ontario is seeing between 100,000 and 120,000 new cases of the virus each day in the pandemic’s sixth wave.
“The wastewater data across the province is showing increasing levels of COVID-19 and that is the case here in London as well—there is increasing amounts of COVID-19 activity and transmission in the community, largely following a significant decline and plateau in Omicron peak in January and February,” Summers said. “The reason for that increase is having more and more people having closer contact with one another. The rolling back of capacity limits was going to lead to increased transmission.”
More than a dozen London-area schools were closed to in-person learning during the Omicron wave that began in December.
Prior to last week’s school closings, the Thames Valley board last closed schools because of staffing shortages on Feb. 2. Both John Wise elementary school in St. Thomas and Kensal Park were both closed for four days as students learned remotely.