This week we're going to be dazzled with data that supports the PHO perspective of why schools are safe. That data is meaningless when it's divorced from the reality of overcrowded schools in an education system that's been defunded for decades. #bced#bcpoli#RestartDisasterPlan
With all due respect to the epidemiological knowledge & experience of @DrBonnieHenry, but when she talks about what is possible in #bced schools, she's veering out of her lane. Teachers are experts in learning, education, schools and classrooms. We know how schools work.
We are especially intimately familiar with the lack of space, resources and facilities in schools. We've had manage those gaps for the past 18 years. Funding #bced students $1866 below the Canadian average has an impact. Not clear that @DrBonnieHenry is aware of that.
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We're repeatedly told that schools have to stay open because that's important for students' mental health but whose mental health is being prioritized by Minister Whiteside? 🧵 1/? #bcpoli#bced
2/?
Certainly not the student who's terrified that their maskless peers are sitting right next to them in a windowless classroom in a school with inadequate ventilation.
3/?
Nor is it the Grade 6 student who texts their mom in the middle of the day to fetch them from school because they're worried about all the maskless students sitting around them in class. They are terrified of taking the variant home to their 40 year old parents.
🧵 Teachers in #bced, in the absence of adequate protections from the @bcndp gov't, let's crowdsource best ideas to keep safe when there's no mask mandate.
1. Wear an N95 mask or equivalent that fits tightly around your face or if you don't have these, double mask.
2. Follow the advice of Dr. Fauci and the mandatory rule of the Peel School District: wear goggles or a face shield. The virus is airborne. You need to keep it out of your eyes. #bcpoli
3. If you are lucky enough to have windows that open, keep them wide open. The virus is airborne. Don't give it opportunities to accumulate in your classroom.
If you're not, for the sake of survival, get a HEPA filter air purifier for your classroom. #bcpoli
Being calm & kind will support mental health but it's truth that will keep us safe.
To that end, a few question suggestions for @richardzussman:
What data, exactly, shows that there is low/no transmission in #bced schools & that students don't transmit the virus? 1/? #bcpoli
2/?
Why did the Minister of Public Safety, and not the Public Health Officer, mandate masks in all indoor public spaces?
" As such, a vaccine alone, no matter how effective, will not tip the balance toward health because COVID-19 is not a disease; it is a symptom of an exhausted planet. " theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl…
Schools are being kept open not because of the need for educating students, their primary function, but because #bced performs a social safety net function in the provision of food, & the support of mental health in children. 1/?
2/? Schools perform these functions despite the fact that there is a Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, a Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, and a Ministry of Child and Family Development in BC.
3/? The ‘downsides’ that Dr Henry talks about to closing schools is not related to a loss of learning but to the loss of food and mental health support for children in one of the richest provinces in Canada. A province where 1 in 5 children lives in poverty.