St. Albert schools impose vaccine mandate

St. Albert Public and Catholic teachers, staff, and volunteers will have to be fully vaccinated against COVID to step into school this December now that both districts have brought in a vaccine mandate.

The Greater St. Albert Catholic and St. Albert Public school boards jointly announced Oct. 8 that they will require all employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 17. Adults will not have to get vaccinated if they have an exemption under the Alberta Human Rights Act or participate in a regular rapid-testing program.

“This is one more safety measure we can put in place to help protect students, staff, and families,” said St. Albert Public board superintendent Krimsen Sumners in an interview shortly before the announcement.

St. Albert Public spokesperson Paula Power clarified that this requirement also applies to contractors, parent volunteers, and basically any adult that enters a school. It will not apply to students.

The announcement was made in response to a letter issued by Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange and Health Minister Jason Copping to school boards on Oct. 5 asking boards to consider implementing mandatory proof-of-vaccination requirements.

Speaking before the announcement, St. Albert Public Teachers’ Local 73 president Ellen Snaith said she was glad the board is making this move, adding that the Alberta Teachers’ Association fully supports vaccine mandates in schools. Most St. Albert teachers she knows are already fully vaccinated.

“It’s just one more step to ensuring our schools are safer,” she said.

Rapid tests inbound

The province also announced Oct. 5 that it is ordering six million at-home rapid testing kits for use by parents and staff as an at-home screening tool for asymptomatic students.

LaGrange said the kits will be available by late October to any K-to-6 student at a school under outbreak status, with other schools getting the kits later.

“These tests are fast and easy and will give parents more confidence sending their kids to school,” LaGrange said.

Sumners said health officials told her these rapid tests will be different from the ones now available to businesses. It is not yet clear if they will be available to Wild Rose students, as their outbreak started before this announcement.

Contact tracing restart

Alberta Health Services stopped reporting individual COVID cases to schools last August and stopped requiring parents to report such cases to schools. It also said it would not declare a COVID-19 outbreak at a school until at least 10 per cent of a school is absent due to the disease.

Cases have since surged in St. Albert schools. There were 114 known cases in the St. Albert Public Schools district by the end of September, compared to seven at the end of September 2020, and enough cases at Wild Rose that officials decided to switch the whole school to at-home learning for half of October.

On Oct. 5, LaGrange said AHS will once again report active COVID cases in schools and will list schools with two or more cases online. Staff will help schools inform close-contacts of students infected with COVID by Oct. 12 and take over contact-tracing completely by mid-November.

LaGrange said AHS will now declare an outbreak at any school with 10 or more cases reported in 14 days and require any K-to-6 class with three or more active cases in class in five days to learn from home.

Sumners said she is happy the province is once again reporting every case to schools, as up until now they had been relying on voluntary reports.

“When you have kiddo who’s at home sick, your first priority is looking after the kiddo,” she said, which means schools might not find out about a COVID case until days later.

Sumners said she has no issue with the new class-quarantine measures, as St. Albert Public was already using that three-student threshold.

Snaith said she is very happy to see the province restore contact tracing. September had been very stressful for teachers as they never knew exactly how many staff and students had COVID in their schools.

“[Contact tracing] is absolutely important for teachers and students so we can all make informed decisions.”

Still, Sumners said she wishes the province had taken these steps a month ago.

“We’re a month [into the school year] and we have over 120 cases,” she said Oct. 6.

“How many cases did we knot know of? … Was there a better way to protect everyone?”

Sturgeon Public, and Centre-Nord officials were unavailable to comment on the province’s new measures.