Most students return to school after extended break due to Omicron

Hundreds of thousands of students in B.C. are heading back to school Monday, a week after winter break was supposed to end.

Many parents have been grappling with whether or not to send their kids back to the classroom because of the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and it seems some will be keeping them at home for now.

There is a sense of anxiety among many parents, saying an additional week — given to schools with the hopes they could bring in enhanced protocols — was not enough time to ease concerns.

“I’m going to home school her if I have to, which is not easy, I know. But I’d rather be smart than send her to school and not know,” said Vinny, a parent in Metro Vancouver, of his child.

He says he has lung problems and has had issues with pneumonia, and is afraid his daughter will bring home the virus if she goes back into school.

“I know like four people just in the last night, they got it. I never knew nobody before, so it’s getting closer to home,” Vinny added about the variant.

Denise Norman, a high school chemistry teacher in Vancouver, is also expressing worry about people’s health.

“I’m really concerned about what’s going to happen if I get sick, or someone in my family gets sick, or if my students get sick,” she told CityNews.

She believes a similar approach to last year might work best.

“Students felt safe. We did a really great job doing hybrid last year, I mean, myself and a lot of my colleagues, and that’s because the Vancouver School Board chose the hybrid model and I think that’s really safe,” Norman explained.

However, as hard as home schooling sounds, many wish that choice was available. Sudden school closures because of outbreaks are possible as students and staff return.

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The province has warned parents to prepare for the possibility of functional closures if too many staff get sick and schools are not able to operate for in-person learning. This makes planning difficult for some.

“What we’re hearing from parents is that school closures could just be last minute, and that puts a lot of anxiety on parents that need to be working full time. How are they going to be finding a place for their children last minute or how are they going to be taking time off?” said Rani Senghera, who is with the Surrey District Parent Advisory Council

The province has said COVID-19 exposure notices will no longer be sent unless there are significant dips in attendance, noting the rapid rate of transmission of the Omicron variant has made the process unreliable.

B.C.’s back-to-class plan includes mandatory three-layer masking in indoor areas, staggered start and break times, and measures to reduce crowding in common areas.

Though the province extended the winter break for most students, many parents in Surrey — the province’s largest school district — argue safety measures are lacking.

“Most parents were hoping for, like we heard in Ontario, that classrooms would be having air filtering units where that’s an extra step that was added on in Ontario, where each classroom has an air purifier. That, I think, would give parents a little bit more peace of mind,” Senghera added.

She says parents also want schools to ensure enhanced masking is available — with more adequate masks distributed to students and staff — as well as boosters for adults, a ramp up of vaccination efforts for school-aged children, and “putting in HEPA filters and other mitigation strategies that don’t have 13 filters.”

“We think this could support schools to stay open,” Senghera told CityNews.

Despite an ongoing fifth wave of infections, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has said schools need to remain open for the emotional, physical, and intellectual well being of children.

She announced on Friday that attendance would be a key measurement to determine whether there needs to be a COIVD response from public health, and that a 10 per cent drop in attendance of both students and staff would generally be enough to do so.

Everything, however, will be handled on a case-by-case basis, Henry said.

While the head of the BC Teachers’ Federation agrees that in-person learning is important for student development, President Teri Mooring believes more should have been done in schools.

“It’s very disconcerting to be in the school last week planning for functional closures, and yet government choosing not to put in place all of the measures that could potentially avoid some of the functional closures that we are concerned will happen,” she said.

“We don’t think the government plan goes far enough. We have suggested a number of areas where we see a need for improvement to the plan that’s in place. We are calling on government to put those measures in place.”