9/18/23, 12:36 PM Another tripledemic fall on horizon?
Another tripledemic fall on horizon?
Health, safety in schools need to be improved
The Chronicle Herald (Provincial) · 7 Sep 2023 · SUSAN L JOUDREY Susan L Joudrey is associate director of the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Dalhousie University.
Here we are again. Another school year, another missed opportunity to make improvements over the summer months to ensure students can safely and consistently learn in Nova Scotia classrooms.
Over the past year, I’ve been critical of the province’s decision to ignore health and safety in schools. Nothing has changed. It seems likely that we’re entering another season of sickness. Thinking back on last fall, it was disappointingly fitting that my family’s COVID infection was brought home from school at the end of November. As I submitted another op-ed about per‐ petual illnesses’ negative impacts on learning, my child became one of the 25-40 per cent of students absent from their classrooms. My spouse and I became part of the collection of sick parents and guardians unable to be productive members of the Nova Scotia workforce. This was shortly after Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, held a perplexing news conference during which he said COVID-19 magically circulated in homes but didn’t seem to originate anywhere, and it most certainly wasn’t spread in schools. Recent studies have demonstrated otherwise. Some have shown that as much as 70 per cent of chains of transmission start with a child, and in-person school contributes to substantial spread. At the only children’s hospital in the region, IWK Health Centre physicians begged Nova Sco‐ tians to reduce transmission of what was referred to as a “tripledemic” — outbreaks of SARS COV-2, RSV and flu — because they were being overwhelmed by unprecedented numbers of sick children.
During fall 2022, educators, students and parents experienced one of the greatest disruptions to learning in the entire pandemic, only rivalled by the initial transition to remote learning in 2020. Meanwhile, Elwin Leroux, then associate deputy minister of education and early child‐
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9/18/23, 12:36 PM Another tripledemic fall on horizon?
hood development, diminished the Nova Scotia Teachers Union’s concerns about lack of staffing, explaining that “first of all, do we need another substitute because sometimes when staff are out, so too are students, so maybe we don’t need another substitute.” A lack of consistent instruction is a disruption to learning. Regardless of the number of stu‐ dents, a teacher is needed not only to teach the designed lesson plan but also respond to immediate learning requirements: recognize what needs to be reviewed, what needs to be taught again in a different way, what needs to be returned to at a later date. As NSTU president Ryan Lutes observed,“As a parent, when I send my kids to school, I expect them to be taught by a certified teacher with a bachelor of education degree. If we’ve gotten to a place in our system where I can’t as a parent expect that, then I think that is a description of a system that isn’t keeping its bargain with parents and kids.”
Will this fall be better? It’s not looking promising. Australia and New Zealand experienced another rough start to the academic year due to illness, and some schools transitioned to remote learning. There are schools in the United States that are already experiencing out‐ breaks resulting in closures.
Even though in 2020-21 Nova Scotia was a model for effectively responding to the pandemic, at this point the province’s situation isn’t different from those other regions. Repeat infections and illness hinder learning in the short term and the long term. In the short term, if a student is absent due to illness, they miss part of a paced curriculum and will need support to make sense of previously taught concepts. When they continue to attend school while they’re sick, students not only transmit their illness to others, they can’t focus on learning activities and can’t get the rest they need to recover. Whenever possible, it’s always better for anyone who’s sick to recover at home.
In the long term, viruses leave lasting effects on human bodies. This might look like a lack of energy, new health conditions, reduced focus and recall, or increased frustration and agita‐ tion.
It’s long been recognized that staying healthy is important to education. There was a time in the 1990s when the Nova Scotia government started to take student and teacher health seri‐ ously.
Canadians for a Safe Learning Environment advocated for improved indoor air quality in schools, and at the end of the 20th century Nova Scotia was removing asbestos from schools and making plans to replace buildings that were full of black mould. During Dr. John Hamm’s premiership, the Department of Environment and Labour, Occupational Health and Safety Division, even drafted indoor air quality regulations that were circulated for comment but never adopted.
It’s disappointing but not surprising that the Nova Scotia government still hasn’t made the necessary modifications to improve health and safety in schools for another year. We’re no longer in 2020. We know that easy improvements to indoor air quality can reduce transmission of viruses and improve conditions for learning. It would be simple to add Corsi-
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9/18/23, 12:36 PM Another tripledemic fall on horizon?
rosenthal boxes and better HEPA units to classrooms while the province improves school HVAC systems.
Access to boosters and a vaccination campaign is still needed at this new stage of the pan‐ demic to reduce severe illness; a location in schools would create greater equity in access. A comprehensive case tracking and communication strategy could motivate schools to intro‐ duce masking when necessary. Smaller classes could reduce transmission and improve stu‐ dents’ education.
I hope that fall 2023 doesn’t replicate last year’s tripledemic. However, I’d feel much better if the government had taken past disruptions more seriously and improved the likelihood of a safer school year.
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