School boards express concerns about required end to mask mandates after March Break

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As provinces lift COVID-19 mask mandates in schools across Canada, many groups, including school boards and teachers’ unions, are saying the change is happening too quickly, and that a more cautious approach could prevent illness from spreading.

Those pushing back against the provincial moves include the country’s largest school board, the Toronto District School Board, whose trustees are calling for more time to remove masking and other pandemic measures.

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Kieran Moore, announced earlier this week that the provincial government would be lifting those requirements when students return from March Break. The province will be ending mask mandates in most other public places at the same time.

Other jurisdictions were faster to end their mandates. Alberta removed masking for students on Feb. 14, making it the first province in Canada to do so. Quebec ended its in-school mandate on Monday.

Nova Scotia and British Columbia, like Ontario, are slated to drop school mask mandates after their respective March Breaks.

TDSB trustees voted Thursday to send a letter to the province and Dr. Moore requesting the ability to temporarily extend masking and other pandemic measures in schools. The letter will also request direction on masking for medically fragile students and staff.

Rachel Chernos Lin, the TDSB trustee who brought forward the motion to ask for more time, said a slower approach would help the district monitor the impact reopening will have on the number of COVID-19 cases in its schools.

“I think people feel like it will go from 0 to 60 overnight,” she said. “To lift everything at once is pretty daunting for a lot of families and staff.”

Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board chair Dawn Danko said her board, which serves just shy of 50,000 students in Hamilton, is planning to move forward with a mask requirement until April 15 and is working to find out what ramifications there could be for going against the provincial directive.

In earlier waves of the pandemic, school boards had the authority to implement their own COVID-19 measures. Some Ontario boards extended masking requirements to children in kindergarten, who weren’t included in the province’s mandate.

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Now, the province is warning boards not to defy its orders.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford told reporters at an event in Barrie, Ont., on Friday that schools are expected to lift their mask rules on the government’s schedule.

“Let me be very clear to the school boards: They aren’t the medical experts. The chief medical officer is the expert,” Mr. Ford said, adding that Dr. Moore had consulted with local medical officers of health before deciding to lift the mandates.

In a statement released the same day, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the province has been one of the most cautious in the country in its approach to removing pandemic restrictions.

“School boards in this province are expected to implement this cautious plan, coupled with the ongoing improvement of air ventilation within Ontario classrooms,” the statement said. “We are also continuing to invest heavily to improve air ventilation by deploying an additional 49,000 HEPA units to schools and child-care centres.”

A similar situation unfolded in Alberta last month, when the province’s Education Minister, Adriana LaGrange, told school boards they needed to follow the province’s directive and not impose their own mask requirements.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association warned it was considering legal options because its members believed removing masks would make classrooms unsafe. Students in Edmonton opposed to the change staged a walkout in protest. The Alberta Federation of Labour sought an emergency injunction that would have kept the masking rules in place, but a judge rejected the request.

In British Columbia, several school boards in the province said on Friday that they have no plans to maintain any mask guidelines of their own. Instead, the decision to wear a mask will be a personal choice for each staff member, student and visitor.

Teri Mooring, president of the BC Teachers’ Federation, said she does not anticipate that any district in B.C. will impose its own mask mandate when there isn’t a provincial health order in place.

Meanwhile, Karen Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said she believes Ontario’s decision to lift pandemic restrictions in schools is premature and might result in further disruptions to in-person learning.

Ms. Brown argued that it would be beneficial to delay the change for two weeks so schools could monitor for an uptick in COVID-19 cases as a result of travel during March Break.

“All at once they’re exposing the students and our members to increased risk,” she said. “We’re concerned about disruption to the system.”

Less than 30 per cent of Ontario children aged 5 to 11 have received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines, which Ms. Brown said is a reason masks could be helpful in reducing spread.

Shameela Shakeel, a parent in York Region, north of Toronto, said it would make sense to extend school mask rules for at least two more weeks to monitor the impact of March Break on COVID-19 case numbers.

“I think a lot of us are just concerned that it’s too soon or maybe just another two weeks even would have made more sense because of the March Break travelling possibilities,” she said.

Some Canadian postsecondary schools are planning to extend mask mandates beyond provincial requirements. In Ontario, Western University, the University of Waterloo and Mohawk College have all said they plan to require students to wear masks for the rest of the winter term.

With reports from Caroline Alphonso, Jeff Gray, James Keller, Xiao Xu and The Canadian Press

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