Vancouver school board makes masks mandatory for all students

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — The Vancouver School Board passed a motion Monday extending the mask mandate to include students from Kindergarten to Grade 3, becoming the first district in the B.C. to go beyond the province’s guidelines.

Trustees Barb Parrott and Allan Wong brought the motion, calling it a way to “encourage and enhance practices that support cultural, emotional, physical, and mental well-being.”

After the meeting, Wong said he thinks the move will come as a relief, since they’ve heard a lot from parents and students worried about the Delta variant and an uptick in cases among young kids.

“There was anxiety and stress and confusion,” he told NEWS 1130. “There has been a lot of communication in emails to us in regard to vulnerable people — vulnerable students or vulnerable family members of students.”

More details about the policy and how it will be implemented will be available “in the coming days,” according to the board. Wong hopes the policy will be “operationalized” within the next week or two. Exemptions will be granted on the same grounds they are for older students.

Kyenta Martins with Safe Schools Coalition BC hopes Monday night’s conversation in Vancouver leads to other districts doing the same.

“I think there is increased risk for all kids during a pandemic when they are sent into a classroom with between 20 and 30 kids, no masks, and questionable ventilation. That is a risk,” she said.

The Vancouver mom who has a daughter in Grade 7 at Tyee Elementary has already pulled out her other child from her Grade 5 class because she’s not vaccinated and is concerned she may be more at risk of getting exposed to COVID-19.

“[The school district] should be allowed to institute a mask mandate now. We shouldn’t have to wait for this,” she said.

Martins has previously called for more transparency about COVID-19 in schools, including how many cases are in a school and when they occur.

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The mask mandate from the province says all students in grades 4 to 12 are required to wear face coverings in indoor areas, as are all staff members and visitors. Masks can be removed when kids are eating or drinking.

People who can’t tolerate wearing a mask for health or behavioural reasons, or aren’t able to put on or take off a mask without help, are exempt from the mask mandate. The province also says staff working with someone with a disability or diverse ability and needs to see visual cues, facial expressions and/or lip read are also exempt.

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An outbreak has closed Promontory Heights Elementary in Chilliwack, with kids learning online, until at least Oct. 4.

Another outbreak at Maple Ridge Christian School has students in Kindergarten to Grade 5 moved to online learning until Oct. 12. Kids in higher grades at that school are continuing in-person learning.

For her part, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has long said that generally, schools were not significant sources of COVID-19 transmission. Studies from Vancouver Coastal Health found fewer than eight per cent of COVID-19 cases were acquired inside the school environment last year.

In Fraser Health, which includes the Surrey School District, 87 per cent of school-associated cases were found to have been caught in community or household transmission, and not from a school setting.

The COVID-19 Immunity Task Force says there is no greater risk to school staff getting sick from COVID-19 in a school compared to their community.

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However, that was before the Delta variant, prompting more calls for safety measures and notification systems for parents.

With files from Nikitha Martins, Sonia Aslam, Martin MacMahon, and Tamara Slobogean