The school board will make the final decision on whether the district implements a vaccine mandate for staff (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

SD73 VACCINE SURVEY

School district committee to send out COVID-19 vaccination surveys to all staff

Nov 1, 2021 | 3:52 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Kamloops-Thompson School District is formulating a COVID-19 vaccination survey that’s expected to go out to all staff in the next week.

While School District 73 does not think it should be making the final call on a vaccine mandate for its staff, it will have to decide.

There has been a committee formed that will meet for the first time this week to gather information around COVID-19. To start, the committee will be following Step 1 of 5 in the province’s K-12 guidelines related to staff vaccine requirements.

“Step 1 is just looking at the privacy issues and concerns around a mandated vaccine,” said Vice-Chair of the SD73 Board of Education Meghan Wade. “Step 5 gets to a possible decision that a board may be making.”

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One of the first steps in the process will be sending out a survey to all staff in the district to inquire about how a vaccine mandate may affect them.

“Each person will be given the opportunity, and we really hope they take it, to be able to give their perspective on — if a vaccine policy was put in place, where you had to show proof of vaccination, would you be willing to do this? Yes or no. That’s just one example of a question,” said SD73 Superintendent Rhonda Nixon.

Nixon says another question could be: if you’re not vaccinated, would you be willing to be tested every 48 hours. Another may ask staff simply if they’re vaccinated or not.

“Hopefully what we’ll ended up for the board is the percentage of employees who agree to provide proof or not of vaccination or provide proof or not of a negative test result should they decide not to be vaccinated,” she said.

Last week, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation found 94 per cent of teachers are fully vaccinated.

Nixon says there is not necessarily a specific number that would decided whether a vaccine mandate is implemented or not.

“It might be that 90 per cent is fine for teachers, but it could be that it’s not fine for bus drivers because we simply couldn’t replace bus drivers,” said Nixon. “So it’s not about picking a number, it’s about the right information, sharing the right information that allows the board to say ‘Ok, I think at this percentage, we can be operational. Let’s proceed.'”

The survey, if approved this week, would go out to staff immediately with results back in a week. The school board has no timeline on when a decision on a vaccine mandate will be made.