Students heading back to school at David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute in Toronto are photographed on Sept. 9, 2021. The Toronto District School Board requires its staff to be fully vaccinated, unless they have an approved exemption.Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail
About 100 teachers and staff at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) have been placed on an unpaid leave of absence for refusing to reveal their COVID-19 vaccination status.
The board, the country’s largest, had said that its roughly 40,000 staff members would need to have two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by Nov. 1 – unless they receive an accommodation – or face consequences that include a leave of absence without pay or a termination of their employment. The TDSB added recently that it would stagger its policy implementation over the next three weeks as it processes roughly 900 requests for medical or creed exemptions, and allows unvaccinated staff to get their first dose. Those who still refuse to be vaccinated by Nov. 21 will be placed on an unpaid leave.
Ryan Bird, a spokesman for the TDSB, said on Wednesday that of the 100 staff who have been placed on unpaid leave, 13 were elementary teachers and three were high-school teachers.
Further, the TDSB said that 693 occasional staff did not disclose their vaccination status and are not allowed to work at the board. Most of them have not worked at the TDSB so far this school year, it noted.
The TDSB is one of a few school boards in the country that requires its staff to be fully vaccinated, unless they have an approved exemption.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board also required all educators and staff to receive their first dose no later than Sept. 30 unless they had a medical or religious accommodation. Spokesman Darcy Knoll said in an e-mail this week that 53 permanent or part-time employees have been placed on leave without pay. Less than 50 per cent were teachers, he added.
The Hamilton public board, west of Toronto, recently removed a requirement that its staff be fully vaccinated by Nov. 30, saying it has received advice from experts and employee groups to do so.
At the TDSB, five staff members have been granted medical exemptions. According to the board’s data, another 912 staff – 2.2 per cent – have requested either a medical or creed exemption. The board said that about 89 per cent of staff are either fully vaccinated, have received one dose or have an approved medical exemption.
In a meeting last week, staff informed trustees that the board had hired supply teachers and support staff to fill vacancies. The board also said it would look to extend the hours of work for support staff, and have a pool of unassigned teachers and staff that could be dispatched to support schools that face shortages.
The Ontario government has not mandated COVID-19 vaccines for education workers, although individual school boards are permitted to do so. Instead, the province has asked school boards to have their employees disclose their vaccination status to the employer.
The province said last week that unvaccinated school staff, including those who have received only one dose, will begin undergoing three rapid antigen COVID-19 tests a week, paid for by taxpayers, starting Nov. 10. These staff members are already required to be tested twice a week. A spokesperson for Education Minister Stephen Lecce said 15 per cent of Ontario’s education workers have either attested to not being fully vaccinated or haven’t said either way. This includes teachers, principals, occasional staff and custodians. Some of them have claimed medical exemptions.
Similarly in British Columbia, the government has left it up to school districts to come up with vaccine mandate policies for staff. No board has required their staff be vaccinated, and on Tuesday, Surrey School District, the largest in B.C., decided against a vaccine mandate. Surrey has been one of the areas hardest hit by the virus.
Vice-chair Terry Allen said in an e-mail that the board approached the decision in a measured way and considered information from many sources, including Fraser Health, the Ministry of Education and the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association.
“Fraser Health presented data to our board that told a very clear story – we have high vaccination rates in our community and schools are a low-risk setting for transmission,” he said. About 87 per cent of residents have received both doses of the vaccine. Mr. Allen added that a vaccine mandate would affect staffing levels.
Neither the district nor the Ministry of Health have disclosed the vaccination rate of teachers and education staff.
A report from the B.C. Teachers’ Federation in late October said that 94 per cent of teachers are fully vaccinated.
BCTF president Teri Mooring said that the province should mandate vaccines: “Teachers are doing their part. But there’s certainly a high level of concern that COVID continues to circulate.”
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