Twelve-year-old Charlie Kozak didn’t feel safe having to be in class today.
“It’s a chaotic mess,” Charlie said during a telephone interview from his home as he prepared to return to his school in Calgary.
“I know that some people in my class traveled out of the country during the Christmas break. Some people have had unsafe family reunions. We are allowed to remove our masks on our desks next to them (which) are not six feet apart.
While some parents are relieved that students in grades K-12 are returning to class after an extended vacation break, many say they are concerned and frustrated by the Alberta government’s unclear instructions on how it plans to contain an increase. in COVID-19 infections in classrooms caused by the Omicron variant.
The province had a positivity rate of nearly 40 percent last week. Education Minister Adriana LaGrange promised that thousands of test kits would be delivered to students and parents in the coming days, but she let schools report and track infections.
Dr. Deena Hinshaw, chief medical officer for health, said that a return to in-person learning is critical and necessary for the mental well-being of students.
“We know that COVID infection has a low, but not zero risk for children. We also know that in-person learning is vitally important to the educational and social development of many children and provides a sense of stability and normalcy in these difficult times, ”he said last week.
Charlie’s mother, Dr. Stephanie Cooper, an obstetrician, said she agrees that mental well-being is worsening among students, but “mental health is not just about being online or in person.”
“There are many other variables that include the stress of not feeling like you have all the information.”
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He pointed to a promise made by LaGrange that students will return to class with more medical masks.
Schools have received their masks and test kits, but the Edmonton Public Schools and the Alberta Teachers Association have said that there are still children who will not receive them until days after they return to school, which could exacerbate the spread of the already highly contagious variant. .
“Plus kids can’t go out in Alberta, it’s -30 C,” Cooper said.
“They will remove their masks and eat in a classroom during the lunch period,” he said. “None of this makes sense. Certainly many parents are left with a lot of questions as to the logistics of how this is going to happen.”
“I don’t have the best mental health either, but I feel like COVID wasn’t what affected that,” Charlie added.
“It was the constant fear of what if I have COVID and then someone else has it? It’s (would) be my fault that I put someone in the hospital because I wasn’t careful enough at school, because someone didn’t want to wear a mask.
Wing Li, an Edmonton-based mother and volunteer with advocacy group Support Our Students Alberta, said she will continue to track outbreaks in schools as the government has stopped tracking contacts.
Li said he can control infections because parents send him letters from schools reporting an outbreak.
She said she has heard from parents who are relieved that their children are going back to school because they do not have the resources to watch over them and work at the same time.
“I think the narrative is being sold that some of us want to close the school, but that’s not the case at all,” Li said.
“We only want security measures so that it is not a complete disaster.”
Edmonton Public Schools wrote a letter to the United Conservative government saying that, despite the extension of the winter break, “our concerns about the division’s personnel and operations have not changed.”
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The school division along with the Calgary Catholic School District have said they anticipate once again fighting to find teachers to replace those who cannot attend because they are ill.
“We are even more exhausted every year this goes on,” Li said. “We know that we have to maintain normality for children when it has not been normal for us at all.
“Having no support adds to exhaustion and a feeling of neglect on the part of policy makers.”
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