Trustees ponder mask mandates to curb spread of classroom-clearing viruses

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This article was published 26/12/2022 (729 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

High levels of student and staff absenteeism are prompting school trustees to revisit mask-wearing as they consider ways to reduce respiratory virus transmission in K-12 buildings.

Elected officials in the Winnipeg School Division discussed mask usage during an in-camera meeting at the start of the month. More recently, the Louis Riel School Division’s board passed a motion to “strongly recommend” face coverings be worn in all divisional facilities.

“When we return to schools in the new year, all students, staff and visitors to our schools and facilities, including buses, are strongly encouraged to wear a mask,” states a notice on LRSD’s website.

Dating back to March 15, when the province ended its indoor mask mandate, there has been debate over whether school boards have the power to enact and enforce public health-related mandates.

The province insists boards can make their own rules within their borders. Educators reject that stance.

“Absent a public health order, you can’t enforce a mandate,” said superintendent Christian Michalik, during a recent interview about LRSD’s concerning attendance data that shows “chronically absent” kindergarten and Grade 1 students outnumbered those who attended classes regularly in autumn.

In a brief statement, a provincial spokesperson wrote, ”boards can make this decision.”

Alan Campbell, president of the Manitoba School Boards Association, said it would be “extremely difficult” for an individual division or school to go it alone in mandating masks at this point.

The Public Schools Act grants trustees decision-making power, but the University of Manitoba’s Cameron Hauseman said government authority prevails — as evidenced by the province’s threats to cut funding to boards that raised education property taxes amid the freeze it issued several years ago.

“They’re both not necessarily being misleading or untruthful, by saying it’s the other one’s job (to issue a mask mandate) but it is definitely frustrating,” said the assistant professor, who studies educational administration.

If the troubling non-attendance trends — which reflect notable flu, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19 activity — worsen in the new year, Hauseman said the province may have no choice but to step in and issue a public health order.

“Part of why we have public schools is so parents can be in the workforce. What kind of economic productivity are we losing by having all of these kids out of school?” he said, adding any measure to keep children actively learning in the classroom is commendable, but LRSD’s latest move “really doesn’t have any teeth.”

The WSD board talked about face coverings on Dec. 5, meeting minutes show. Citing the fact the discussion took place in private, chairwoman Betty Edel declined to provide further information.

“All we can do is highly recommend (masks) and make sure they’re available so there’s no barriers for people to wear them,” Edel said.

Brent Johnson, who has two children in the province’s largest division, each of whom have missed at least a week of classes this year due to illness, said what is most frustrating is the limited changes made to improve air quality in classrooms.

Johnson purchased a CO2 monitor to assess levels in various public places, including a winter holiday concert at his children’s school. By the time the show ended, he said his monitor indicated the level had reached nearly 2,300 parts per million, in its “red zone.”

The CO2 concentration outside is about 425 ppm. Indoor levels below 1,000 ppm typically indicate an environment has acceptable ventilation.

Johnson is among several parents in different school buildings who offered to supply their kids’ elementary schools with HEPA filters early on in the pandemic. WSD refused the donations, in part due to concerns about equity across the board.

“These kids have missed out on so, so much — socially, emotionally, even in terms of habit-forming because it’s been an abnormal environment,” said the father of children in grades 3 and 6.

“You would think that in a fourth pandemic-affected year, we’d have some things figured out… so we didn’t need to talk about mitigation measures (like masks).”

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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