The Hastings Prince Edward District School Board trustees heard an update on COVID-19 in relation to the school community at Monday’s meeting.
Director of Education Katherine MacIver gave the update as part of the Director of Education Report.
MacIver said that, despite a recent rash of positive cases identified in students in the school district, there is no risk of spread associated.
“Certainly, we’ve had a very active past four days in our schools. In the last four days coming forward we’ve had six active cases at Trenton High School, one at Park Dale, three at Trent River and one at Prince Charles Trenton. What I’m happy to assure trustees of is that we are not currently considering any of these cases as part of a school outbreak nor has there been any transmission that has occurred as a result of these cases within our schools.”
She said that the school board is continuing to encourage parents to engage in active daily screening of their children before they send them to school for symptoms of COVID-19 and to keep students at home if they are ill.
MacIver also touched on the recent announcement of the approval of Pfizer-Biontech’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11 years old.
In compliance with the province’s announcement students will be sent home with five COVID-19 rapid antigen tests for them or their family to use if they would like. The school will also be sending home information on how to use the tests and what to do if the result is positive on a test.
She went on to say that school boards have been given the option to move back to a more traditional looking school year with regular four period semesters instead of the “quadmester” system that has been used for much of the pandemic school years.
According to MacIver they will consult with parents, students and other partners and come to a decision before the start of the traditional semester in February.
Next was the topic of in-school COVID-19 vaccination clinics. MacIver said that some schools will facilitate clinics run exclusively by the Hastings Prince Edward Public Health employees after hours.
“We also have vaccination clinics that will be held in our secondary schools. We have an agreement with the public health unit that we will use our facilities so that our families can access vaccination clinics within their own community. We certainly have the space and the parking that will make it more accessible for our families. Clinics will continue to be held after hours. Just a reminder that they are staffed entirely by public health staff and the health unit is responsible for ensuring consent of parents and guardians and administration of the vaccine.”
Vice Chair Jennifer Cobb asked MacIver if, since the COVID-19 vaccine has not been added to the list of vaccines kept track of on the student records of immunization, would they ensure that staff would not exclude or pressure unvaccinated students.
“I wanted to know how we, as a system, are ensuring that our administrators and educators are not somehow provoking, encouraging or promoting vaccination and that we have some safeguards in place so there’s no differentiated services to children in the classroom whether or not they’re vaccinated.”
MacIver said that, thus far, the school board has a good track record with regards to such incidents and that it’s part of both the board’s and the ministry’s return to learning plan to not differentiate and that teachers do not know the vaccination status of students unless the students decide to share that information.
Cobb reiterated that she wanted assurance that the schools would not be advertising or making announcements about the school vaccine clinics so that it “doesn’t seem like we’re promoting this.”
MacIver said that disseminating information about the clinics is part of the plan.
“Actually, Vice Chair Cobb, we can have a discussion here among trustees. We have been asked by the Ministry of Education to both communicate and promote these vaccination clinics with our families. It is our intent that we will be sending communications home to families to let them know. It will be very clear in that communication what is a public health responsibility and what is a school board responsibility. I feel it is important for us to share that information with families, so that is our intent.”
The locations or opening dates of the vaccine clinics were not disclosed.
