South Island school boards are considering mandatory vaccines for school district staff, but officials don’t expect anything to happen right away.
On Thursday, Premier John Horgan said elected school board trustees should be making the decision about whether to have vaccine mandates for workers in B.C. schools, rather than the province.
Parent groups and the B.C. Teachers’ Federation have called for the province’s 60 school districts to introduce a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the absence of a provincewide order, while the New Westminster board of education has asked for a legal opinion on making the shots mandatory.
Greater Victoria School Board chairwoman Ann Whiteaker said mandating COVID-19 vaccination for school staff has been “on the radar” for some time. “Obviously there’s a lot of call for it,” she said, noting the board has not yet formally discussed the issue and there are no motions on the table.
Whiteaker said she would like to see a cohesive approach by school boards. “My hope is that within the Island we will be having discussions as board chairs to ensure that we’re congruent with each other,” she said, adding a gradual approach would be best.
“We don’t want to go and rush really quickly and then end up with a whole bunch of grievances,” she said. “That’s not helpful for anybody.”
Saanich School Board chairman Tim Dunford said Friday that he’s confident the board will consider the issue “in due course.”
“It’s not going to happen overnight,” he said, but: “For sure the public is interested, the board is interested.”
Sooke School Board chairman Ravi Parmar said he has received emails from parents who support a vaccine mandate in the district.
A committee that includes the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association, the Ministry of Education and the B.C. Trustees Association has already been formed to consider the idea of a vaccine mandate, Parmar said.
“Ultimately, what they’re creating is a framework that would allow boards, if they so choose, to be able to have a vaccine mandate in place,” Parmar said. “But that starts with the legal perspective as to whether we are allowed to or not.”
He said the Sooke board has not talked about a vaccine mandate, but will likely discuss it “in the near-term future,” adding he doesn’t expect anything from B.C. Public School Employers’ Association and the government for at least another week.
B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Teri Mooring said she would only support a provincewide vaccine mandate for schools, rather than one imposed by individual districts.
“To do anything different we think would create a lot of instability potentially within the system,” she said. “We think it would be very unfair to school boards, especially in parts of the province that have a high level of vaccine hesitancy.
“And it would be unworkable to have a situation in B.C. where some teachers were mandated to be vaccinated and others not. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The BCTF is urging its members to get vaccinated. Mooring said the union may not be able to help teachers unless they have a legitimate exemption, should the province require them to be vaccinated.
“You need to go ahead and do it,” she said. “There are consequences that could impact member pay, member pensions, member benefits.”
Like Mooring, Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association president Winona Waldron supports a provincial approach to school vaccine mandates. “I think it’s going to be tricky, each school district taking it on their own,” said Waldron, noting the “vast majority” of the GVTA’s approximately 2,000 members are vaccinated.
“We’ve all the way along encouraged our teachers to get vaccinated,” she said. “I’ve heard from no one saying: ‘Don’t make me get vaccinated’ in this local.”
Victoria Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils president Angela Carmichael said the idea of a vaccine mandate will be discussed at her group’s next meeting later this month.
“I really want to see how parents and caregivers feel,” she said. “It’s such a slippery slope, because you are infringing on people’s rights to choose, however we are wanting to keep our students and staff safe.
“I think most parents and caregivers would like to see this pandemic be over with, and the only way that we can get on the other side of this is to be vaccinated.”
— with a file from The Canadian Press
