Thread by @CBCQueensPark

NEW: 337 schools in Ontario reporting absence rates of 30% or higher among staff & students.
That's almost 1/10 of the schools for which data is available.
(Absences tallied Friday, reported today, the first day Ontario has made this data public.) #onted
data.ontario.ca/dataset/summar…

30% threshold is considered to be high absence rate, possibly indicating high Omicron spread.
Another 262 schools reported absence rates of 25 to 29%.
Added together: one in six schools reporting 25%+ absence rate.
(3,453 of Ontario's 4,800 schools reported data today.) #onted

Despite all that, only 16 schools in Ontario were reported to be closed "due to operational impacts of COVID-19" on Friday.
What the province calls its "School closures and absenteeism" web page doesn't actually list the 16 schools. #onted
ontario.ca/page/covid-19-…

Also unclear: are all boards/schools counting "absences" the same way? If student logs in online from home are they counted as absent or present? What's the policy for counting absences at Ontario's biggest school boards? @tdsb @PeelSchools @YRDSB @TCDSB @DPCDSBSchools ? #onted

@tdsb @PeelSchools @YRDSB @TCDSB @DPCDSBSchools I've dug further into the reported absence rates in Ontario's 5 largest school boards.
Unless Omicron is having vastly different impact on boards in same locations, sure looks like different boards are counting "absence" differently.
#onted

Ahead of this morning's school absence report, this story by @krushowy & @Izzy74 puts yesterday's data into context.
“If you aren’t pulling out COVID numbers, you aren’t giving people what they are looking for," says @OPSBA president Cathy Abraham.
thestar.com/politics/provi…