The province and Interior Health will be reporting individual school exposures starting Friday (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

COVID-19 SCHOOL REPORTING

COVID-19 school notifications to relieve Kamloops parent, teacher anxiety

Sep 24, 2021 | 3:40 PM

KAMLOOPS — “Why is it not transparent? Why were the exposures [not reported]? We have two schools right now that are closed because of exposures.”

Laurel MacPherson, the President of the Kamloops-Thompson Teachers’ Association (KTTA), is referring to schools in Chilliwack and Victoria, but locally she’s already been receiving phone calls from concerned teachers who have felt left in the dark early in the school year.

“I just had a call from a teacher who was concerned about a pregnancy, so those kinds of things,” she said. “You’re always concerned about your health, and we just want people to be safe.”

Currently, the province has only been contacting individuals at risk of an exposure, but starting sometime next week school outbreaks will be reported to the community.

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“I’d rather be kept in the loop about how many cases there are compared to being left in the dark,” said Beattie Elementary School parent Catrina Jackson.

Fellow parent Josh Ikteama added, “I love to get this report. It helps me to prepare my mind and also know what to do for my child, especially when I know which grade is affected.”

According to the KTTA, there were 63 reported COVID-19 exposures from Jan. 13 to May 26. A few of them involved Sa-Hali Secondary, which once again has had two exposures early in the year, according to MacPherson.

While the number of cases coming out of schools can be alarming, teachers feel it’s the right step to report them.

“It relieves a lot of anxiety in schools with teachers just in regards to what’s going on because if you don’t know what’s going, then you speculate and a lot of people look to social media for answers, for information, and it’s not accurate,” said MacPherson.

School District 73, which will be partners with Interior Health in distributing notifications of exposures and cases, says it will be good to have more reliable information.

“I think even using the website like they did last year might be a consideration that they’re thinking of,” said SD73 Superintendent Rhonda Nixon. “In the past, there were notifications on the website. Now, notifications are coming from various social media sources, so I think having accurate information is what I’m looking forward to.”

Some parents are wanting the province and the district to take it one step further and be more specific about where the cases exactly originated.

“Peace of mind would be, if there was a case that was specifically affecting my child’s classroom, that’s what I would want to know,” said Beattie Elementary parent Riley Fletcher.

However, at this point, not even the teachers’ association knows how the province and Interior Health will be reporting the cases.