Back-to-school plan OK with Waterloo region's public health officials

The region's public health officials say they're supportive of the province's plan to return to school, but they will monitor the situation locally in the coming weeks.

Dr. Ryan Van Meer, an associate medical officer of health for the region, told regional councillors on Tuesday that officials were glad to see cohorting in the plan. That means students will stay with their classmates all day. Van Meer says the cohorting has worked well in daycare settings where children are in groups of 15 and they don't mix with other groups.

"If there ever were to be a positive case in a school, that when we're doing out contact tracing, we're already starting from a significantly reduced number of contacts then we might not if there was not a plan," he said.

He added cohorting along with masks, physical distancing, cleaning and hand washing will be important to curb the spread of COVID-19 for students who return to the classroom this fall. Parents do have the option to keep their children at home to do virtual learning.

"The current plan contains those key features that we hoped to see," he said.

Van Meer said the province's plan also strikes a balance between COVID-19 concerns and student mental health.

"As always, when there is guidance like that, there are local implementation issues to sort out," he said, adding they're working with the local school boards to sort out the "nuts and bolts" of the plan. "We'll assess the local situation and if there are parts of the plan, or local issues that require [attention], we'll feed this back to the province."

What is region's jurisdiction in classrooms?

Coun. Tom Galloway expressed concerns that people living in the region will be turning to their municipal politicians for answers because they are the most accessible level of government. The regional council also serves as the region's board of health, but Galloway said he wants to understand if the region even has jurisdiction

"We already see on social media people wanting us to comment on class sizes. I don't know if we have the ability, the right, to even talk about class sizes," Galloway said.

"This is going to be a big deal when school reopens. There's going to be a million questions and I think members of council are going to get asked, but more importantly public health is going to get asked, people are going to think that public health has jurisdiction."

Galloway said it's important to understand what jurisdiction the region's public health has in schools. The region's mask bylaw, he noted, does not extend to schools because the province runs schools.

"It will be a little bit complicated and I just think we're going to need to answer a lot of questions, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I think the reopening of schools is going to be much more significant than going into phase three for questions and concerns," he said.

Regional solicitor Debra Arnold said ultimately, the medical officer of health "always has overarching authority with respect to essentially any public health concern" under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. That would extend, if deemed appropriate, to Waterloo region's schools, she said.

Public health nurses

Regional councillors also asked staff about the province's announcement to hire more public health nurses. 

Anne Schlorff, the region's director is central resources, said recent job postings by the region had good responses and she expects that to be the same with new public health nurses.

The region is still awaiting details from the province about the new public health nurses but Schlorff said they hope to have the postings up soon with people in place for the fall.