North Van, West Van parents voice relief school COVID notices are back

A West Vancouver mom who runs a Facebook page where North Shore residents swap information on school COVID cases says parents are overwhelmingly relieved to hear school notifications will be back this year.

“People are glad that this decision is being reversed,” said Coralynn Gehl, who last year posted notifications of COVID-19 cases in local schools.

“It was absolutely the wrong decision ['to cancel the notifications] to begin with. People need to know.”

Earlier this month, parents whose kids were heading back to school on the North Shore said they aren’t happy with the government’s decision to stop providing the notifications when a child’s classmate or teacher tests positive for COVID-19.

At the time, Dr. Bonnie Henry, the province’s medical health officer, said the notifications were stopping because most people felt the letters were more “anxiety-provoking than helpful.”

Gehl said when the halt to notifications was announced, however, she heard from many parents who were upset about the change.

"I get messages from parents on a regular basis, saying we haven't seen anything reported. Are you hearing rumours? Do you know if anything's going on? Is there anything you tell me? Because we can see that there are cases happening. And no one's telling us whether or not they're in schools."

On Tuesday evening, Zee Noorani, co-chair of the North Vancouver District Parents Advisory Council, told school trustees parents want to know if there are COVID cases in their children's schools "so they can actively manage their family's COVID-19 risk and their contact with vulnerable family members." Noorani said he hopes the notifications will provide the same level of detail as last year's school notices. Otherwise parents will just turn to social media to find out about COVID cases, he said.

At a press conference Tuesday, Henry announced she was reinstating the school COVID-19 notifications after hearing from parents and teachers across the province.

“Our team has recognized that parents do need an authoritative source to go to have an understanding of what's happening,” she said, adding notifications are expected to start again by the end of the week.

Gehl said she thinks the decision was reversed both because of parental pressure and the fact that parents were continuing to share information anyway, both at individual schools and through online sites like B.C.’s School COVID Tracker.

"So it just became apparent that they weren't going to be able to hide it the way they seem to want to."

Even with the change, “I can’t say I’m 100 per cent confident we’re going to get good information,” said Gehl, noting at times only about 30 per cent of the notifications she received from parents seemed to make it on to Vancouver Coastal Health’s official information site for school cases.

Gehl said ideally, she’d love it if B.C. came out with a system similar to the Toronto school district, where parents could just go online and check how many new cases had been reported among students and teachers in a school.

Gehl said she intends to keep her local COVID-19 information page going, and will post both school and Vancouver Coastal Health notifications, and cases in which families disclose to her directly that their kids who attend school have tested positive.

“I know it helped make parents feel better,” she said.

"I know it provided a service to the community. And I won't stop until the province starts sharing accurate information on a timely basis."

So far this school year, there has only been one notice of a school COVID-19 case made public, for students and staff in one class at Ecole Pauline Johnson, who were exposed to a positive case, presumed to be the Delta variant, on Sept. 7 through Sept. 10. Families of students in the class were informed Sept. 17, and students and their families were advised to monitor for symptoms until Sept. 24.

On Tuesday, North Vancouver schools superintendent Mark Pearmain said the school district has not yet received any official information about how the notifications will be done this year.

Pearmain noted that the North Shore has among the highest vaccination rates in the province, in both adults and teens eligible for vaccines.

High schools have been hosting COVID-19 vaccination clinics for teens this month – some of those in conjunction with regular vaccination clinics.

Between 88 and 92 per cent of teens 12-17 have received first doses of vaccine on the North Shore and between 77 and 83 per cent have received second doses, according to B.C.'s Centre for Disease Control.