More measures needed to keep schools safe: NDP

The Saskatchewan NDP doesn’t believe enough is being done to keep schools safe.

Schools across the province welcomed students back this week after the Christmas break, but the provincial government didn’t put any new measures in place despite Omicron raising cases to record daily highs.

The only changes came to the self-isolation rules for students.

NDP Education Critic Carla Beck said there have been dozens of COVID cases in schools.

“If this government really believes that schools should be the last to close and the first to open, something they haven’t prioritized throughout this whole pandemic, they need to take immediate measures to ensure that’s the case,” Beck said Thursday.

NDP Leader Ryan Meili said his party wants to keep schools open, but also wants to make sure they are safe and that families are kept safe.

“(We need) efforts to keep schools open, protect staff and students, and support school families,” Meili said. “We need to publicly report what’s happening with school outbreaks (and) what’s happening with absenteeism for students and staff. We need to hire retired substitutes and casual school staff and bring them on full-time throughout this fifth wave to support.

“We need to implement evidence-based isolation policies making sure that the choices we are making actually prevent outbreaks.”

Meili also said more masks need to be given to staff, work should be done on the ventilation within schools, and the province needs to bring back school-based immunization programs.

There have been reports of large parties taking place prior to school returning. While Meili said he’s disappointed to see it happen, the blame doesn’t all fall on the teenagers at them.

“We can’t expect teenagers to lead the way when adults won’t. When you’ve got a government that is downplaying it — saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s not serious, it’s not happening here yet’ — this is what happens. People don’t take it seriously,” Meili said.

“I don’t approve of (the gatherings) but you can hardly blame (those who attended) given the leadership they’ve had.”

Meili said things like gathering limits should have been brought in a month ago to keep the community safe.

“We needed to do it when we saw this was coming. This is what’s so frustrating. We’ve got (Premier) Scott Moe with the modelling in front of him, able to read the modelling and see what’s in front of him and know what’s going to happen and know that our hospitals are going to get overwhelmed,” Meili said.

“He’s able to watch what’s going on in Quebec and Ontario that got hit first and he is still happy to sit on his hands and let Saskatchewan families and health-care workers and kids in schools pay the price by having their lives disrupted because he wasn’t willing to show any leadership.”