Thousands of children in B.C. returned to school Monday after a longer-than-expected Christmas break because of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19.
“I’m pretty concerned about it,” said Kelowna mom Shaila Wock. “My husband is actually up north and he just got COVID. It’s pretty scary actually, especially with the little guys”
The province delayed the return to school after Christmas by a week to allow school districts to implement enhanced safety measures.
“Tournaments have been cancelled…we have staggered start and break times at schools,” said Kevin Kaardal, Central Okanagan Public Schools superintendent.
“Our assemblies have gone back to online, board meetings have gone back to online…we’re maintaining our daily cleaning, and making sure that we’re requiring masks and strongly encouraging everyone to wear them appropriately.”
Kaardal told Global News that while day one saw all schools in the Central Okanagan school district open and operating, there were the usual number of staff and students away due to illness for this time of year.
“There’s no functional, partial or full school closures at this point. We are still anticipating that that’s a possibility,” Kaardal said.
The first day back vacancies were filled by substitute teachers and other casual employees, but Kaardal worries that if more people fall ill, it may lead to functional school closures, in which case in-person learning will switch to online.
“I’m very concerned about families’ ability to find childcare if we have to do a functional closure and closes schools due to staff shortages and our inability to keep kids safe because we just don’t have enough staff to supervise them,” he told Global News.
Kaardal said he’s strongly encouraging parents to have backup childcare plans in case there in-person learning has to be temporarily halted on very short notice.
“We might not know until literally that morning and prior to school starting,” he said. “It’s something parents need to be aware of.”
Parents are encouraged to check their E-mails regularly in the event their school is affected.
School districts have been mandated to watch school attendance closely and report numbers to the province and Interior Health (IH) daily.
“That’s the biggest change in terms of the daily reporting to the provincial government and to Interior Health around absenteeism,” Kaardal said. “That has not been a requirement around safety prior to this, except early on in the pandemic, and then it ended. So we began that process again.”
Pediatric vaccine rollout has been fairly slow across the Interior Health region.
According to IH, only 32 per cent of children aged five to 11 have received their first dose.
That is below the 40 per cent provincial average and well below the highest vaccination rate among that demographic in Vancouver Coastal at 53 per cent.
While no one from IH was available for comment Monday, Kaardal said he hopes those numbers increase,
“Obviously, I’d like to see 100 per cent of people vaccinated,” he said. “I want everyone who can take advantage of it to get vaccinated because that’s our best defense against serious health outcomes.”
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