Newmarket parent Shameela Shakeel said she has been reporting local school COVID-19 cases to her Facebook group since schools reopened after the pandemic lockdown.
The education advocate has more than 5,000 members in the private group. In the beginning, York Region school boards were posting cases on their website, as was York Region Public Health.
But now that the province has removed public health units from management of school COVID-19 cases, Shakeel and her members on on their own. She offers an online form for parents to provide information about cases, and she posts what she is sent.
“It’s unfortunate we have to do this as school communities, that we have to fill this gap,” she said.
One week after students returned to class Jan. 19 — stalled two days by snowfall — local parents and school boards are still facing struggles to navigate the new back-to-school protocols amidst the Omicron wave of the pandemic. Parents have sought new ways to keep track of COVID-19 cases, with some school boards calling for the province to step back in to do so again.
Rather than have public health units track cases, outbreaks and dismiss cohorts, the province implemented a new system this week: school tracking of absenteeism. Instead of getting notified of COVID-19 cases in their children's classes, parents are only due for notification if a class has more than 30 per cent absenteeism.
But those absenteeisms do not have to be COVID-related and can be for many different reasons.
“It’s just so ridiculous,” Shakeel said of the new system. “The inaccuracies of it are not lost on all of us.”
“It places the burden on administrators and educators and families again,” she said. “It kind of erodes trust. What exactly is public health doing? Why do we have to do this job for them?”
Tracking the data can be a challenge. York Catholic District School Board director of education Domenic Scuglia told trustees Jan. 25 that some of the data for their board in the early days was inaccurate.
“The fact they’ve decided to use attendance as a measure for alerting cause for concern in our communities, that there may be high levels of COVID, may not be the best way to do it,” Scuglia said.
Some school boards have sent letters to the province asking for a return to public health tracking, among other concerns in reopening.
York school boards considered the same in the past week. The York Region District School Board wrote a letter Jan. 21 advocating for the return of reporting, contact tracing and cohort dismissal by public health, in addition to more student masks, HEPA filters and rapid test kits.
“The board of trustees wants to ensure that students, families and staff have the utmost confidence that their learning and working environments are safe,” board chair Allan Tam said in a letter.
However, the York Catholic District School board opted not to send a letter of concern to the ministry, in a motion defeated by a 6-4 vote Jan. 25.
Trustee Dino Giuliani said he did not feel the board had enough information.
“I don’t put anything onto paper unless I can justify it, and without the data and information on it, I cannot support a letter at this time,” he said.
Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association York unit acting president Mike Totten, who encouraged the board to send a letter like some other school boards, said teachers were unhappy with the decision.
“It is clear that the trustees do not share the same concerns as the association does,” Totten said.
However, Shakeel noted that the Catholic board has directed principals to inform parents of COVID-19 cases they become aware of, which she said has made a positive difference.
The province has maintained that it has made enough investments to keep schools open safely, with additional measures like providing staff with N95 masks, education-focused vaccine clinics and distributing rapid tests to students.
Shakeel said she intends to continue posting COVID-19 cases, though recognizes they will not be reflective of all the cases out there.
