Vaccine mandates may exacerbate school staff shortages, cautions BCSTA president

Vancouver -

Two school boards in British Columbia decided to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for staff this week, three months after the release of a road map guiding districts through the procedure.

Both Delta and Revelstoke’s school boards announced their decisions in the same week that K-12 students made a full return to class. When the Omicron variant began rapidly spreading through B.C. in December, the province delayed the start of the spring term by one week, hoping it would give schools time to double down on safety procedures.

Before the holiday break, roughly half of the province’s 60 school districts had yet to decide whether or not they’d require staff to disclose their vaccination status, according to Stephanie Higginson, president of the British Columbia School Trustees Association (BCSTA).

“This is a really complicated issue, particularly if it may lead to staffing shortages in an already challenging time,” said Higginson, speaking to CTV News on the same day that two schools declared functional closures over labour shortages.

Armstrong Elementary School plans to reopen on Tuesday, while Heritage Park Middle School in Mission will stay closed until Thursday. In total, four schools announced functional closures this week, including Hazelton Secondary School and a Christian private school in Surrey.

“I think if this helps mitigate those interruptions, you might see more people implementing them,” says Higginson. “Districts are going to be looking at this from the perspective of ‘How do we best serve the students and staff in a safe way?’ – while also making sure that they mitigate any interruptions to face to face learning.”

The latest provincial data shows that unvaccinated people accounted for 21.5 percent of COVID-19 cases in B.C. between Jan. 6 and 12, and 34.2 per cent of hospitalizations, despite making up less than 15 per cent of the population. In addition, the province reports 94 percent of B.C. teachers are fully vaccinated.

“The introduction of Omicron has changed things just a little bit,” says Higginson, referring to new federal guidelines that suggest people self-isolate for 5 days upon learning they are COVID-19 positive— slashing the original timeline in half.

“BCSTA has always been very supportive of everyone being vaccinated, while trusting the district is making the best decisions possible with the information they have in conjunction with their medical health officers," said. Higginson. “That’s what's really navigated us through this pandemic very well in B.C. so far.”