The Vancouver School Board (VSB) has announced that they will not mandate that their employees get vaccinated, sending a clear message to those attending their schools in this city. That message is that kids' health, and the health of their families, matters less than the very-wrong opinions of people who have fallen prey to misinformation and who harbour anti-vaccination views.
Late in October, 4,090 B.C. health care workers were put on unpaid leave as they missed the government's deadline for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations. Those workers will lose their jobs for good if they decide not to get vaccinated by November 15, 2021.
However the government was not so bold with the staff of school boards, oddly punting the decision around mandatory vaccinations to individual districts to decide for themselves, even after the BC Teachers Federation (BCTF) said they wouldn't oppose a mandate from the province.
BCTF president Teri Mooring issued a public letter saying that a district-by-district option would be the wrong approach, noting that "Any vaccine mandate would need to be provincially implemented and done equitably. We can’t have unequal treatment of workers in the public education system," she wrote.
The VSB decided to not upset the anti-vaxxers in their ranks, putting the rights of people to expose our kids to COVID-19 first.
As a parent of a child who attends a VSB school, I would happily accept all non-vaccinated staff (3-5%?) being put on leave, and my kid learning that 1. they matter and 2. everyone needs to do their part - especially those teaching them, and those assisting in their education in other ways by working for the school board.
Our kids deserve so much better than this.
