Hundreds of TDSB staff seeking faith-based COVID vaccination exemptions are still in schools

Some 640 employees of the Toronto District School Board are seeking faith-based COVID-19 vaccination exemptions, the vast majority of whom continue to work in schools while the board reviews their requests.

With vaccination rates among children between the ages of five and 11 the lowest in the province for both first and second dosesexperts say these unvaccinated staff in the workplace – even if they are undergoing thrice-weekly rapid tests as required – needlessly put students, their family members and other staff at risk.

“The real issue is that kids, especially kindergarteners who are too young to get vaccinated, are vulnerable, as well as the kids who are a little bit older who have not had their second doses yet,” said Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, an Ottawa-based family physician. “The other risk, of course, is that then these staff are likely to get sick and be absent, which then creates all kinds of chaos for schools.”

She added that allowing unvaccinated employees to work in schools puts an unfair burden on families with children who have disabilities or who are immunocompromised who have to decide whether to send their kids to school or not.

“That’s not right,” Kaplan-Myrth said. “For staff to be vaccinated is to make a statement that they care about students and their colleagues, families and community.”

There are currently about 643 TDSB staff members seeking faith-based (also known as creed-based) exemptions to the vaccine, of whom about 543 are school-based, according to board spokesperson Ryan Bird. The remaining 100 unvaccinated individuals are central administration staff who do not work in schools.

“As they are currently meeting the requirements of the vaccine procedure and are awaiting a decision on their exemption request, they would continue to be able to attend work,” Bird said.

“Those that are in schools are expected to adhere to the procedure by completing Rapid Antigen Testing three times per week as required by the Ministry of Education and the TDSB and adhere to all other health and safety protocols including daily screening.”

The board has asked just over 200 of those seeking a faith-based exemptions for additional information to substantiate their requests, and staff will be notified in the coming weeks if their requests have been approved or denied, according to information presented at a meeting of the board’s planning and priorities committee on Jan. 26. Zero have been granted so far.

In addition, the Ontario Human Rights Commission said last fall that people who choose not to be vaccinated based on personal preferences do not have the right to accommodation under the human rights code.

The latest TDSB numbers show a further 73 staff are seeking medical exemptions, and to date the board has granted six. That means the rate at which the board is granting medical exemptions – out of a total of 41,894 employees – is almost three times higher than what Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, says is the legitimate rate of medical exemptions that should be granted based on the true incidence of adverse reactions: between one and five in 100,000, or 0.005 per cent at the most.

For Anna Dewar Gully, whose two girls are in Grade 1 and Grade 5 in the TDSB, allowing unvaccinated staff to continue working in schools is a “failure” to protect students.

“There’s no way for me to protect myself absent the knowledge of who is or who is not vaccinated, other than to just remove my children from school, which I would much prefer not to do,” she said.

Dewar Gully noted that vaccination is not actually mandatory for board staff if they can continue to work in schools while unvaccinated.

“Most parents in the city of Toronto are under the misconception that it is,” she said. “Actually, there are multiple outs in that policy / procedure.”

Only a few boards in the province, including the TDSB, have policies for employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Partially vaccinated staff were required to be fully vaccinated with two doses by Jan. 21. Executive Superintendent Audley Salmon told the planning and priorities committee on Jan. 26 that about 29 staff were non-compliant with this procedure and were placed on a non-disciplinary leave of absence without pay.

To date, 90.5 per cent of all board staff are deemed to be in compliance with the procedure.

“I do not think anyone unvaccinated should be in a school, period. But I also do not believe that people should be fired for not being vaccinated. What you want to do is reassign, ”said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, acknowledging that collective agreements may create limitations on where people could be reassigned to.

He added that there has been plenty of time to review staff creed-exemption requests and believes the board is “dragging its feet.”

“In principle, you want to say to people, you’re working with a vulnerable population. You know you are. You know there’s this vaccine. Connect the dots here. Get vaccinated or you’re not working with vulnerable people anymore. And here are your choices. ”