North Shore parents, teachers welcome broader school mask mandate

North Shore teachers and parents are welcoming an announcement by the provincial health officer Friday making masks mandatory in schools for all children. But they still question whether measures in place are enough to keep kids safe and say notifications about COVID cases in schools are still sorely lacking.

“I think it’s fantastic,” said mom Kate Gillespie on Friday, shortly after the announcement by Dr. Bonnie Henry and Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside making masks mandatory for children in primary grades.

Gillespie added, however that the mask mandate for all kids should have been in place at the beginning of the school year. “They should have been more proactive about it.”

The announcement Friday came after two of the biggest school districts – Vancouver and Surrey – as well as several private schools, opted last week to make masks mandatory for all students.

Gillespie said making masks mandatory earlier might have avoided some cases of COVID that have swept through her daughter’s Capilano Elementary school.

“There’s too many kids at Capilano that tested positive,” she said.

Gillespie said her own daughter, in Grade 6 at the school, is one of those students. She said she’d still ike to see more social distancing in classes.

Information sharing by the health authority with parents has also been lacking, she said. “I think they’ve done an awful job with that.”

Gillespie said a contract tracer didn’t call her until two days after her daughter tested positive for COVID. “It wasn’t even close to what I thought it should be,” she said.

Most parents at the school were left to find out about COVID cases in their children’s classes through group text messages, she said.

Two classes at Capilano Elementary – a grade 3 and a grade 5 class – were told to self-isolate this week – and families of a Grade 2 class and a Grade 6 class were told to monitor for COVID symptoms.

Parents have voiced frustration that it took so long to find out about the COVID cases in their school, noting the first exposures dated back two weeks and continued up until Sept. 24.

Information posted so far by the health authority – which in the case of Capilano does not indicate how many cases there have been or in which grades – is still “woefully inadequate,” said Coralynn Gehl, a West Vancouver mom who runs a Facebook page where parents swap information about COVID cases. “I was really hoping they would improve the process, but they’ve chosen not to.”

Gehl said she’ll continue to post verified information in her Facebook page.

The rash of cases at Capilano Elementary – believed to number over 20 - comes as rates of COVID-19 cases among school-aged children have significantly increased, particularly among children aged five – 11, according to Henry. Henry said that includes a “particularly rapid increase in the last two weeks.”

She added there are also a number of other respiratory viruses circulating, which have recently pushed up the number of children getting tested for COVID-19. In North Vancouver, lines at the ICBC COVID testing centre have involved wait times of three hours on some days.

Spencer Capier, president of the West Vancouver Teachers Association, said Friday teachers are glad to see the mask mandate extended to all grades.

Both the North Vancouver Teachers Association and co-chair of the North Vancouver District Parents Advisory Council voiced support for a broader mask mandate at the first school board meeting in September.

Currently there are still no COVID-19 vaccines approved for children under 12.

Henry said Friday she hopes to see the Pfizer vaccine approved for kids by the end of the year, and possibly as early as the end of October.