It’s back to school in B.C. next week as planned

No changes were announced today by B.C. public health officials regarding plans for children in kindergarten to grade 12 returning to class next week as planned. 

What has changed is the enhanced safety practices that have been worked out during the week-long delay in re-opening after the Christmas break and how parents will be notified about COVID cases in schools.

“Since the pandemic began, we have seen that schools are a reflection of what happens in the community, which is why we want to ensure safety measures are in place,” Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside said during a news briefing today, Jan. 7, noting that means COVID will be an issue to deal with in schools with the Omicron wave.

READ MORE: Rising number of COVID cases extends Christmas vacation for most B.C. students

That will start with a refresher course on proper mask wearing for all students. They need to wear three-layer, well fitting masks. If they don’t bring them from home, there will be plentiful supplies in schools, she said.

During this past week, staff have worked out ways to reduce crowding, stagger break times and arrange to only have virtual assemblies and staff meetings. Visitors are also restricted in schools.

Because of the rapid spread of Omicron, individual cases of COVID in schools will not be posted on health authority websites, as in the past.

"Having access to information about individual test-positive cases is not going to be possible so we need a proxy to know what’s going on in schools," Whiteside said.

What will be done instead is that schools will monitor absenteeism. When that becomes higher than normal, health authorities will be notified and take action, such as deploying rapid test kits. Parents, at this point, will be notified but it was not explained how that will be done.

The one new health order issued by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry at the news briefing was to require all businesses to put workplace safety plans in place, as was done earlier in the pandemic.

“This is about activating all those layers of protection again to reduce the impact of the Omicron variant in our communities,” Dr. Henry said.

This means having barriers in place, reducing crowding and creating safe spaces for staff, she said.

READ MORE: B.C.'s top doctor tells schools to make plans to operate short-staffed

Earlier this week Dr. Henry urged businesses to have contingency plans in place to deal with expected high absentee rates amongst their workers.

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