The Edmonton Public School Board and the Edmonton Catholic School District say they are both closely monitoring a recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
Edmonton public board chair Trisha Estabrooks said Wednesday morning that there have been 41 confirmed cases of COVID-19 — 34 students and seven staff members — since April 7 when students returned to class after spring break.
“How can we not be concerned? Here we are a year and more into this pandemic, we’re in a third wave, this is sort of the final quarter – we’re just about to start quarter four – and here we are slammed with again just a spike in cases again. And I think it’s concerning too to see how young people in particular in this third wave are being impacted by these variants,” Estabrooks said Tuesday evening.
“It’s been a challenging year and the final quarter of this year, we’re just not catching a break unfortunately and I know our staff are feeling it. You talk to families, you talk to moms and dads, we’re feeling the impact of COVID really acutely right now.”
The positive cases have forced about 900 Edmonton public students into quarantine.
“That’s the size, the population of a high school within Edmonton Public Schools and there’s a real ripple effect when you think of all those students and their families wrapped up in this quarantine process,” Estabrooks said.
“It is concerning. I think not just parents and students and staff, I think all Edmontonians need to be concerned that here we are, very much in the midst of a third wave. This has real impact on families and kids that we serve.”
Sandra Palazzo is the board chair of Edmonton Catholic Schools. In April, the district has seen about 90 cases of COVID-19, which have resulted in about 1,000 people having to quarantine, Palazzo said.
“There has been an increase,” Palazzo said Wednesday morning.
“We are concerned and while we’re concerned, we believe we are doing everything possible to mitigate whatever in-school transmissions that may be occurring.”
Palazzo said staff members have done a wonderful job over the past eight months at following the public health measures.
“We’re managing,” she said.
“We do have a COVID response team who is called in to support schools that lose administration teams due to isolations. We also have dedicated substitutes in each school to help support absences. On top of that we have our regular supply sub-roster.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Alberta Education announced via a news release that all students in grades 7 to 12 enrolled in Calgary public and Calgary Catholic schools will temporarily shift to at-home learning on April 19 for two weeks.
The province said the decision was made for a number of reasons, including a chronic shortage of substitute teachers, a significant number of students and staff in quarantine or isolation, recent requests from the board for short-term shifts for a number of schools and substantial COVID-19 cases in the community.
In addressing the shift to at-home learning for Calgary schools, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said as of Wednesday afternoon, the ministry had not received requests from Edmonton school districts to temporarily move their schools’ classes online.
The ripple effect is having an impact on classrooms within both districts.
“If there is a positive case in one of our schools there can be dozens of students and other staff who have to isolate,” Palazzo said.
EPSB Supt. Darrel Robertson told the board Tuesday that 18 supply staff positions were not able to be filled recently in one day. Estabrooks said that doesn’t mean classes are going without teachers, but it puts extra pressure on the teachers who are working and a principal may have to step in a teach, for example.
“It’s a bit of a canary in a coal mine. It shows the picture of the real impact of COVID on our division. When we have trouble filling our supply staff positions, that is concerning.”
When asked whether it may be time to shift back to online learning, Estabrooks said that decision need to be made by the provincial government. She also noted the situation isn’t as bad as it was in mid-November.
“We’re nowhere near those numbers that we saw in November,” she said, adding administration is in regular contact with Alberta Health and Alberta Education on the current situation. “Any sort of move to close schools or close partial grades, for example, that’s a decision that does rest with the province of Alberta.
“We’re not there yet but there are some concerning numbers that we saw that our superintendent shared with us today that certainly we need to be paying very close attention to whether that might be a request in the future.”
Palazzo said if a decision to shift to online learning is made by the province, the Catholic district will be prepared.
“It’s also dependent on parents and students and staff and I believe it’s through the collaborative efforts of all of what’s best for the kids that will be what it is,” she said.
“If it’s unsafe for students to be in school then I’m confident that the ministry will at that time make a decision to pivot online.”
During a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health said the province is seeing “a sharp rise in cases in school-aged Albertans.”
On Thursday, Edmonton Public Schools said 16.3 per cent of its schools have at least one COVID-19 case, and one per cent of all its students are isolating. Edmonton Catholic Schools said 26 per cent of its schools have at least one COVID-19 case and three per cent of all its students are isolating.
According to provincial data, there are currently 768 active cases in Albertans aged five to nine and 2,531 active cases of COVID-19 in those aged 10 to 19. Hinshaw said there were active alerts or outbreaks in 453 schools, or about 19 per cent of all schools in Alberta.
“While there are no risk-free options with COVID-19, the rise we have seen is not attributed to any single cause and in fact is often linked to social gatherings outside school rather than transmission within classrooms,” Hinshaw said.
“This reinforces the importance of following the measures in place not only during school hours, but before and after them as well.”
Hinshaw said a total of 2,653 cases of COVID-19 have been identified in schools since Jan. 11.
The Alberta government announced last Saturday the in-school COVID-19 rapid testing program will be expanding to 300 schools.
Ontario made an announcement earlier this week that students will shift to remote learning after April break.
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