Windsor-Essex public school board trustees to discuss bringing mask mandate back for students

Trustees with the Greater Essex County District School Board will discuss re-implementing a mask mandate for its students, following a decision from Ottawa school board trustees to do the same, according to GECDSB officials.

Though it's not clear exactly when it will go into effect, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board voted Tuesday night to reinstate mandatory masking in its schools.

According to board chairperson Alicia Higgison, trustees with the GECDSB have been expressing concern over recent pandemic metrics.

Among those metrics are updated data from WE SPARK HEALTH Institute which shows the level of COVID-19 in Windsor-Essex's wastewater has reached a record high since the pandemic started.

The previous record was set on Jan. 14. On that date, the research institute recorded the viral level in wastewater at 178,055 SARS-CoV-2 gene copies per litre.

But that record was broken this week when that number rose to 193,200 on Apr. 11.

Despite that metric, however, Higgison said she's not sure that her fellow trustees will move forward with a board-specific mask mandate during their next meeting this coming Tuesday.

"I sit on calls with the minister (of education) weekly. What the minister has said is that they are unenforceable," said Higgison. "So what I would hate to do is for us to institute or give a promise of something that can't actually be enforced in schools."

"That just downloads more of that work to staff in our schools who are trying to enforce something that that we don't have the capacity or ability to do. So we're stuck. We're really in a rough place."

But according to University of Windsor PhD sociology graduate Jane McArthur, who also has two school-aged daughters, there's no reason why school boards should not be able to enforce a mask mandate.

Mother-of-two Jane McArthur says she would like to see public health measures implemented at a local level as COVID wastewater metrics reach record highs for Windsor-Essex. McArthur, top left, is seen here with her two daughters. (Source: Jane McArthur)

"When we talk about not bringing peanuts into schools, or simple things even like requiring children to have extra gym shoes, there are lots of things that schools and school boards and teachers and principals enforce all of the time," she said.

"I personally don't buy it that it's unenforceable. I think that there's a lack of willingness to enforce it because I don't think we quite have the buy-in of the efficacy of these tools for the prevention of the virus."

McArthur, who also works for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, adds she also takes exception with comments from Windsor-Essex's acting medical officer of health Dr. Shanker Nesathurai last week.

On Apr. 7, Nesathurai said the province should enact measures to ensure public health messaging is consistent throughout Ontario in favour of re-implementing requirements like mandatory masking at a local level.

"As someone who's been involved in legislation and policy around occupational and environmental health, we know that sometimes our interventions have to be created at various levels of governance," said McArthur.

"I can't think of a justifiable argument to say that it's a better public health approach to just follow a provincial guideline."

CTV News requested an interview with the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit on Wednesday to ask about the potential of reissuing emergency orders at a local level amid record-high wastewater levels — but was told by a WECHU spokesperson to defer that question to their media briefing on Thursday.

In a statement, the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School said it has "no intention" of implementing a mask mandate "until such a direction is made by the provincial government."

On Monday, Ontario's chief medical officer of health Dr. Kieran Moore issued a strong recommendation for mask-wearing indoors but stopped short of a full mandate.