With schools reopening, what’s a parent to do?
With schools set to reopen, weighing benefits and risks of sending children a tough individual choice
With B.C. schools preparing to reopen on an optional, part-time basis in June, parents have a difficult decision to make: Send them to school, or keep them at home.
On Friday, Premier John Horgan said the government is relying on science that shows “we’re ready to bring students back to school safely on a gradual and part-time basis,” but emphasized the return is optional.
“It is the parent’s choice to send their children to school now that we are resuming partial in-class instruction,” said Education Minister Rob Fleming.
That means many parents will need to assess the benefits and risks for themselves.
Abbotsford’s Eric Nyvall said he’s planning to send his four kids back to school. His wife is a hospital doctor, so his kids could have attended school as the children of a front-line essential services worker. Since schools closed, about 5,000 children across the province have continued to attend. But as Nyvall is self-employed, the family decided to give school at home a try.
“It’s stretched us thin,” he said Saturday. “The kids are out of routine so much. I think they are better off in school.”
Nyvall said if he had any hesitation about safety, he’d keep his kids home, but he’s confident in the protocols that will be in place. “Everyone is getting better and better at this,” he said.
Taking the opposite view, Port Coquitlam’s Bree Kozak said she’s leaning toward keeping her eight-year-old daughter home from school, even though teaching her while working herself is “taking a toll.”
“My daughter is high-functioning autistic and home-schooling has been a major fight,” she said. “We made the decision to have peace at home and not fight it anymore, so very little schooling is done.”
Kozak said her husband is high risk and she’d rather keep grandparents in the family’s “bubble,” rather than having her daughter attend school.
She also questioned a government policy that says a student may still attend school if another person in their home has symptoms of COVID-19, but the student is asymptomatic. “Sending her to school would be easier for us, but I don’t think it’s right for us,” she said.
Chilliwack’s Kristy van den Bosch said she plans to keep her son home, as she’s worried about the stress from having strict regulations about contact with other kids.
“I’m not saying they aren’t needed, just that I would rather my child not have to deal with that on top of everything else,” she said. “We are lucky that I am able to stay home with him.”
Beginning June 1, students in kindergarten to Grade 5 will be able to go to school half time, while grades 6 to 12 will likely go one day a week.
The provincial health officer’s order prohibiting mass gatherings does not apply to school activities, so there can be more than 50 students and staff in a school as long as they are not in one area and are practising physical distancing, according to the education ministry.
Districts are required to collaborate with their local unions to find the “right balance” for their teachers and ensure it does not increase workloads.
A rising death toll from overdoses in B.C. during the COVID-19 pandemic has advocates, government officials and health-care workers concerned about a public health emergency that has been overshadowed by the response to the virus.
The B.C. Coroners Service says 113 people died in March of suspected illicit drug toxicity, the first time in a year that deaths from overdoses across B.C. exceeded 100 in a month.
The province declared opioid-related overdoses a public health emergency four years ago. More than 5,000 people have since died from overdoses.
Judy Darcy, the minister of mental health and addictions, said overdose deaths have become “routine” to people in B.C.
“I think the reality is that over the last few years, sadly, I hate to say this, sadly, I think the overdose crisis in many peoples’ lives has come to be normalized,” she said.
B.C. was starting to see a drop in overdose-related deaths by the end of 2019, only to see a spike once the COVID-19 pandemic started.
“What you have is almost a COVID perfect storm for people at high risk,” Darcy said.
“We’re talking about two public health emergencies, we’re talking about a more toxic drug supply and we’re talking about people staying home because of COVID-19. The majority of people who die of overdoses die because they’re using alone.”
Dr. Patricia Daly, the chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said it’s difficult to sustain attention on the long-running health emergency in the face of a global pandemic.
“It’s hard to keep it top of mind and people are concerned — and rightly so — about COVID-19, which has had an impact on all of our lives, but it’s about a balance of risk,” she said.
Drug users living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside face a bigger risk from overdoses than they do from COVID-19, Daly added.
The Northern Health authority has the highest rate of overdose deaths in B.C. Its medical officer blames a changing drug supply combined with physical distancing measures for part of the increase in deaths.
Another factor could be tied to government relief funds, said Dr. Rakel Kling.
“Some access to some of the government funding and a bit easier access to money from the COVID response could be contributing to different drug use as well,” Kling said.
Kling wouldn’t speculate on how government relief funds could specifically affect overdoses, besides allowing users to buy different drugs.
Part of the problem facing the heath authority in combating overdoses is its size, she said.
Northern Health is responsible for 300,000 residents ranging across a vast area from central B.C. to the border with the Northwest Territories and Yukon.
“While all of our communities have harm-reduction supplies, it could be quite a distance to access these supplies,” she said, adding that the problem is particularly acute in smaller communities.
To prevent overdoses during the COVID-19 outbreak amid fears the illegal drug supply would become more toxic, B.C. issued guidelines for a safe supply of drugs for users in April.
It allows doctors to prescribe alternative medications for those using illicit drugs, ranging from hydromorphone for opioid users to Dexedrine for those who use stimulants.
Karen Ward, a drug rights advocate as well as a drug policy and poverty reduction consultant with the City of Vancouver, believes the COVID-19 pandemic highlights how lives can be saved when resources and political will are directed at an issue.
“It’s a lack of political will and it’s a choice. This took time to turn into a disaster,” she said of the overdose death toll. “Thousands of people have died and that didn’t have to happen.”
Darcy called the recent deaths “heartbreaking,” adding that overdoses are not being treated with less importance by the provincial government.
She cited the $608 million the province has allocated to combat overdoses and help drug users since the NDP came to power almost three years ago as evidence of its political will.
“Of course there’s a lot more to do but we have not taken our foot off the pedal for one minute,” Darcy said.