Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK
January 13, 2022 - 6:00 PM
Central Okanagan trustees will decide on a vaccine mandate for their teachers and staff against COVID-19 later this month.
During last night’s regular school district board meeting, the decision to require staff to have COVID-19 vaccinations was tabled until the next board meeting, Jan. 26, said chair Moyra Baxter.
"Every question or comment last night was about this," she said.
The school district is requiring teachers and staff to disclose their vaccination status. They have until tomorrow, Jan. 14, to provide that information, Baxter said. If they don't, the school board will assume they're unvaccinated.
Baxter said she doesn’t yet know the level of response.
The Central Okanagan Teachers Association, the union representing teachers, has filed a grievance on the matter.
READ MORE: What you can do if teachers are spreading anti-vaccination messages in B.C. schools
Some senior and municipal governments have made vaccination a condition of employment, as have some employers. Those who refuse are suspended without pay then terminated.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has made it mandatory for health-care workers to be vaccinated but left it to school boards to make their own decisions, arguing that schools have low transmission rates.
“It was frustrating that this was left up to individual boards to decide and now Delta school board has decided to go ahead and I don’t know whether others will start but quite a few school boards jumped in and said 'no we’re not doing it' but we’ve been sort of (waiting and seeing) and trying to gather information,” Baxter said.
READ MORE: Central Okanagan schools ahead of provincial curve on staff vaccination status
The Central Okanagan school district, as did others in the Thompson and Okanagan regions, surveyed their staff in the fall but that was voluntary and the response rate often was low.
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