Steinbach-based school division overshadows others in mask exemptions By: Maggie Macintosh Posted: 7:00 PM CST Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022

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This article was published 21/02/2022 (1037 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Hanover School Division has granted nearly double the number of student mask exemptions than a Winnipeg district more than twice its size.

The Steinbach-based division has approved at least 105 requests among its student population of 7,760 in southeastern Manitoba — a region in which protesters have long been making known their distaste for COVID-19 restrictions, while vaccine uptake has trailed behind the rest of the province.

The River East Transcona School Division, the second largest of its kind in the province, with almost 16,400 pupils enrolled in metro classrooms, has only accepted 54.

The Free Press obtained data on face covering exemptions in 2021-22 from a number of divisions located in both Winnipeg and southern Manitoba via email surveys and freedom of information requests.

The findings show Hanover has green-lit more requests than three neighbouring rural divisions combined. Red River Valley, Garden Valley, and Western have 8,200 students in total; they have accepted 16, 27 and 10 mask exemptions, respectively.

In Winnipeg, only three board offices had the data handy.

In Louis Riel, 34 out of around 15,420 youth have a mask exemption. A total of 49 requests have been approved in St. James-Assiniboia, a division with a population slightly greater than 8,230.

Hanover superintendent Shelley Amos was not available for an interview on the subject. The chairman of the school board, Ron Falk, did not respond to requests for comment.

In an emailed statement, Amos said her office approves exemption requests first made directly to schools in the form of a written notice outlining a student’s specific limitations, and does so based on provincial guidelines.

“A note from a medical doctor or nurse practitioner is not required by the department of education; however, the school division has the discretion to request (such) a note,” she wrote.

Face coverings were first made mandatory for school staff and students in Grade 4 and up in September 2020. The indoor mask mandate was expanded to include kindergarten students and all of their older peers at the start of the current school year to acknowledge the highly infectious nature of new variants of COVID-19.

Mask exemptions are supposed to be few and far between, handed out only to children under age five, either chronologically or developmentally, and individuals who cannot remove a mask without help.

There is also a list of specific medical conditions — including sensory processing disorders, facial deformities, extreme agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder and breathing difficulties — that can render any school visitor exempt from donning a face covering.

Dr. Marni Hanna, a Winnipeg pediatrician who leads the Manitoba Pediatric Society, has both approved and denied mask exemption requests in recent months. The former group, a half-dozen since March 2020, have all been issued for students who are autistic or have significant behavioural or developmental delay issues, Hanna said.

The pediatrician said many families, however, have raised unfounded concerns about respiratory issues, while others have requested their child be exempt due to headaches.

“People were asking for them for things like asthma, which is quite common and absolutely not a reason to need a mask exemption — in fact, the mask protects you against getting sick, which is a major thing that makes asthma worse,” Hanna said, adding she fielded many inquiries when indoor mask mandates were first introduced.

Steinbach Regional Secondary School, one of the three largest high schools in Manitoba and the site of an anti-public health mandate protest earlier this month, has the largest number of exemptions in Hanover: 23.

Sisler High School administration estimates only five students, all of whom are in the inclusive education program, do not wear masks to the Winnipeg building, which also has a population of approximately 1,700.

Blumenort School, an elementary building in Hanover, has recorded at least 14 exemptions. That means roughly four per cent of the rural elementary students do not wear masks, which is a small minority but an outlier nonetheless.

“The higher number of exemptions offered in the southern regions suggests a broader reluctance in accepting public health and school-based recommendations,” said Michelle Driedger, a community health professor at the University of Manitoba.

Driedger, an expert in health-risk communication, has spent much of the last two years researching public sentiment about the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Exemptions may be irrelevant come March 15, should the province confirm face coverings will be made optional in K-12 classrooms when mandates are lifted across society.

“Masks remain a requirement in schools at this time,” a provincial spokesperson wrote via email last week. “(The education department) continues to work with public health officials and will provide greater clarification on all preventive measures for schools as public health orders change.”

Neither the president nor vice-president of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society could be reached for comment on the subject.

The province began a month-long process of loosening public health restrictions in schools and across society Feb. 15. K-12 staff can now wear non-medical masks if they so choose and students do not have to wear face coverings during physical education courses.

“The important thing is we’re not changing the mask requirement for the classroom space, either for the teacher or the student,” said James Bedford, president of MTS, during an interview earlier this month.

As far as Hanna is concerned, the province should be cautious about removing school mandates when it lifts them in other areas of society.

“The last thing that we want is for schools to have a massive increase in cases and have to resort to remote learning again,” the pediatrician added.

Even if masks become optional before the end of the academic year, Dr. Jared Bullard anticipates the majority of community members will continue masking, owing to anxiety and because it has become routine.

“There’s also going to be a fair amount of peer pressure (when mandates are lifted),” said Bullard, a pediatric infectious disease specialist.

“I don’t expect people to simply stop wearing masks en masse.”

A spokesperson for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba indicated the professional regulatory body has received calls from members of the public who have been unsuccessful in getting exemptions.

The spokesperson did not say whether the college is looking into any formal complaints filed against members alleged to have frivolously issued exemptions.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie

Maggie Macintosh
Reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Winnipeg Free Press. Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

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