Teachers who have tested positive for COVID-19 must now dip into their sick leave when absent from class. Some see their bank suddenly melt away and remember to go to work even if they have symptoms.
Posted at 5:00 am
Marie-Eve Morasse The press
These days, teachers are told by their school service center that if they contract COVID-19 during the school year, they must self-isolate at home for five days and use their bank of sick days, which totals six.
However, there is a lively debate in staff rooms about the need to test and isolate in this context.
“Not only will people not test themselves, but there are many who say that even if they haven’t completed their five days of isolation, they will show up at school with a mask on,” says François-Olivier Loignon, who teaches music in Quebec.
“I live wage to wage with a family to take care of. What if I get COVID-19 next week and my sick days are gone? I just can’t afford the luxury of missing another day of work when I’m sick…” testifies a Montreal teacher. She asked for anonymity for fear of reprisals from her employer.
The President of the Autonomous Federation for Education (FAE), Mélanie Hubert, finds it difficult to understand that on the one hand “we say that it is a return to normal” in schools, and on the other that public health requires a five-day isolation when you have a positive test.
We say to teachers with mild symptoms: “Go home and get your five sick days” from a bank that only has six, regrets Ms. Hubert.
As with other workers, teachers could be allowed to work from home while being substituted in class. “We’re not saying we need to be paid to do nothing, there are many things we could do remotely,” explains the FAE President.
That’s what François-Olivier Loignon did when he contracted COVID-19 last spring. “The first day [d’isolement]I couldn’t teach, but the other days I taught my students in class on a screen,” says Mr. Loignon.
“A blur” around the holidays
For the past year, school service centers have had the ability to provide paid days for those who have had to isolate after testing positive for COVID-19. The health emergency enabled them to have Quebec reimburse them for these additional costs to their budget.
This year there is not a single government directive reserved for employers. Therefore, the rules change from one school service center to another, or even from one school to another.
Those holidays are currently “undetermined,” notes Kathleen Legault, president of the Montreal Association of School Principals (AMDES). She cannot understand why teachers do not have the same working conditions throughout the province.
“Is it the same from one school service center to another? The answer is no, in Montreal as elsewhere [au Québec] ‘ says Ms. Legault.
The Center de services scolaire de Montréal points out that “with the end of the health emergency and the ministerial decrees, and like the other centers for school services [on] is to review the treatment of absences related to periods of isolation related to COVID-19”.
“If people don’t have free time because of COVID-19, do they explain it when they have COVID? Are you isolating? asks Ms. Legault.
The two largest teachers’ unions in Quebec have the same concern.
When people have few symptoms, might they be tempted to go back to work? It’s the fear we have.
Mélanie Hubert, President of the Autonomous Education Association
“I fear when I see her shores melting in the sun, [les enseignants] tell themselves that if they don’t feel ill they will work,” adds Josée Scalabrini, President of the Federation of Education Unions.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Josée Scalabrini, President of the Federation of Educational Unions
It would be a very bad idea, recalls Roxane Borgès Da Silva, a professor at the University of Montreal’s School of Public Health. The BA.5 subvariant is particularly contagious, she recalls.
“A priori we could tell ourselves that we will only infect children, that they are not too vulnerable, etc. But we cannot argue like that. A child can live with its grandparents. It can have crazy effects and lead to the contamination of large numbers of people,” says Ms. Borgès Da Silva.
François-Olivier Loignon agrees. “If a teacher gives it to their whole class, we don’t know who might have problems,” he concludes.
Schools are required to report absences
Quebec will again ask schools to consider COVID-19 cases and related student and staff absences.
The Department of Education confirmed that this data would be collected again weekly at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute of Public Health (INSPQ). However, it is unknown if they will be released.
The INSPQ stopped monitoring outbreaks in schools last January. The Department of Education then pledged to publish a report on student and staff absences related to COVID-19 a few times a week. However, this inventory was not resumed at the beginning of the school year, preventing the evolution of the pandemic from being followed in the province’s schools.
At the height of winter, student absenteeism due to COVID-19 was in the tens of thousands. By the beginning of February, 65,000 students were absent due to illness.
If we know the exact number of students who are out of school this year, INSPQ data shows that on average at least forty young people contract COVID-19 every day. However, this figure is underestimated due to limited access to PCR testing for young people.
With Pierre-André Normandin, La Presse