Unvaccinated teachers to be put to the test

Staffing shortages severe enough to temporarily close schools in the Central Okanagan are a potential threat as employees will soon be required to be fully vaccinated or get regular testing for COVID-19, says the superintendent of schools.

Central Okanagan Public Schools superintendent Kevin Kaardal says seasonal illnesses are already taking a toll on staffing.

“We’re experiencing staff challenges right now, just with absences because of flu and cold season,” he said in an interview Thursday with The Daily Courier.

Trustees voted 5-2 late Wednesday night to introduce a vaccine mandate, with the majority saying it was a necessary and important way to protect students and district staff. The mandate affects all 4,000 employees of Central Okanagan Public Schools. “We’ll be in a position where some people choose to get vaccinated and some will not. We’ll have to explore some limited medical exemptions,” he said. “We’ll just move forward.”

Kaardal said nearly 90% of school district employees are fully vaccinated.

Next steps are to meet with employee groups and review letters of agreement that have come from the BC Public School Employers Association, work through the details, and have them signed off. Finally, after a six-week notice period, employees will be asked to begin testing or take unpaid leave.

“No employees in SD23 who want to continue to work for us will lose their positions,” he said.

“That’s not the case with many vaccine mandates within government or in the private sector.”

That choice, said Kaardal, was provided through negotiation between the unions and employer, he said.

No employees will lose seniority.

The BC Teachers Federation and the union representing other workers have said they do not oppose a vaccine mandate. Frequency of COVID testing is yet to be determined, but it would be at least once per week, typically twice.

Meanwhile, school board chairwoman Moyra Baxter told The Daily Courier on Thursday that district employees have faced a lot of abuse.

“It’s not unusual in the past few months. We’ve received quite a lot of obscene phone calls. We’ve had people threaten us,” she said.

Baxter said the strategy has been to wear trustees down by barraging them with emails, phone calls, and text messages. If a threat is considered serious, the superintendent forwards it to the RCMP.

Abusive language on Wednesday night eventually put an end to a third public question and comments period. “We had to shut it down because of the obscenities,” she said.

Baxter said 1,000 people attended the Zoom meeting.

“These people are so well organized, they’d been fundraising, they believe in this so strongly,” she said. “All over social media they were rallying the forces.”

At the meeting, trustees debated the mandate for 90 minutes after spending 90 minutes listening to members of the public, virtually all of whom were against a vaccine mandate. Critics questioned the effectiveness of vaccines, said mandates were against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and said the measure would promote divisiveness in schools.

“Our ethical and legal responsibility to our employees is for a safe workplace,” said trustee Norah Bowman, who proposed the vaccine mandate.

Voting in favour of the mandate were Bowman, Baxter, Wayne Broughton, Julia Fraser and West Kelowna trustee Chantelle Desrosiers.

They variously said the overwhelming medical consensus was that vaccines offered safe and effective protection against COVID19. While vaccinated people can still test positive for the disease, they are much less likely to become seriously ill or require hospitalization than the unvaccinated, they said.

Trustees Amy Geistlinger and Lee-Ann Tiede voted against the vaccine mandate.

Unlike her colleagues, Geistlinger took the views of those who addressed the board as reflective of community sentiment.

“The public is overwhelmingly opposed to this mandate,” she said.

Tiede said: “This is not a vaccine that is working…I’m totally opposed to this mandate.”