Surrey elementary school staff stage solidarity walk-in to demand greater COVID safety

Teachers and support staff atcole Woodward Hill Elementary School in Surrey, B.C., staged a "solidarity walk-in" Tuesday morning to draw attention to what they say are too lax COVID-19 safety measures in light of new cases of a rapidly spreading coronavirus variant.

Dozens of school staff wore red T-shirts reading #RedforBCEDas they paraded single file outside the Newton-area school before classes started.

The president of the Surrey Teachers Association said he hoped the walk-in would bring attention to staff demands for expanded safety protocols.

"The main concern is that this is a school that has had a lot of exposures and now has people isolated due to variants," said Matt Westphal.

"The current safety measures are not good enough. For example, in thatwhole building, not in a single classroom is any child required to wear a mask. And we think that needs to change."

coleWoodward Hill Elementary is one of seven schools in the Fraser Health district where the faster-spreading coronavirus variantfirst discovered in the United Kingdom was detected over the weekend.

The other schoolsare James ArdielElementary,Surrey Traditional Elementary School, A.H.P. Matthew Elementary, Tamanawis Secondary,Gobind SarvarIndependent School and Hellings Elementary.

About 300 staff and students in the affected schools have been told to stay home.

On Twitter, Westphal saiddistricts needed to be given the power to set their own COVID-19 protocols to deal with the differing pandemic conditions in different communities.

"The severity of the pandemic varies across the province, yet we have a single set of health and safety rules for all schools," he posted.

But Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside said there was no reason to change existing protocols.

"We have very robust healthand safety plans in place," said Whitesideon Monday."Where our safety plans are adhered to, we see very low rates of transmission."

The B.C. Teachers' Federation said the governmentand health officials need to counter the new threat to the safety ofschools andgo beyondthe established health and safety guidelines when necessary.

"This will help keep people in schools safe, but also preventthe variants of concern from spreading to vulnerable adults livingin students' homes,'' says a statement from BCTF president TeriMooring.