Has the pandemic made us realize schools are an essential service?

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on children across the country, but Ontario’s kids have a good case that they got the worst of it.

The Ontario government closed schools for a total of 29 weeks over the last two years, meaning kids missed about seven months of in-person learning. Not only does that lead the country, it’s the worst record for any jurisdiction in North America^{1Opinion: The wrong people are making decisions on school closures. Our children deserve better}.

A new study^{2Assessing Ontario’s Pandemic School Closures and What Students Need} from Joanna DeJong VanHof, a researcher at the Cardus think tank, argues that Ontario’s pandemic experience shows that schools should be an essential service.

“The question of whether to designate education as an essential service contains deeper, more foundational questions at its core: What place do children and their education hold in our society? Should education be considered fundamental to the well-being of children?” wrote DeJong VanHof.

The study points to the repeated claims by the government that schools would be the “last to close and the first to open,” when in reality, the decisions on school closures seemed arbitrary compared to related decisions on business closures.

DeJong VanHof writes that making schools an essential service would require the government to thoroughly study the effects of school closures on children, from the mental health outcomes to the academic issues, to give a clear sense of the consequences of closing schools in future crises. In the event of another pandemic or health crisis, it may even require the government to make health-care investments, rather than relying on school closures to ease the burden on the health-care system.

Some experts have argued that schools were incorrectly treated as uniquely dangerous areas for COVID-19 transmission when the evidence shows the opposite effect.

Most cases found in schools were contracted in the community, with a recent study showing that only one percent of cases^{3SARS-CoV-2 transmission in kindergarten to grade 12 schools in the Vancouver Coastal Health region: a descriptive epidemiologic study} were acquired in the school itself. Another study found that teachers were less likely^{4SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence among Vancouver public school staff in British Columbia, Canada} to be at risk than other workers.

“Many jurisdictions around the globe, with far fewer mitigation measures, have managed to keep schools open without harming children, teachers and their communities,” wrote physicians Alanna Golden and Martha Fulford, in the National Post.

DeJong VanHof argues that designating schools an essential service would not be easy. For one, it would require negotiations with teachers’ unions and a study of the potential impacts on collective-bargaining agreements.

But the potential harms of school closures are slowly being revealed, as data collection catches up after two years of pandemic schooling. Early data shows a six-fold increase in “extreme absenteeism,” which refers to students who have missed more than 50 percent of classes. It could take years for students to catch up from “learning loss,” and governments have only now started to develop plans for tackling the issue. Students have also missed extra-curricular activities, graduation ceremonies, and everyday socializing.

The mental health effects could take years to come to light.

“Social workers describe being overwhelmed with requests from parents and students for help navigating symptoms of anxiety and depression,” wrote DeJong VanHof.

In January, Dr. Elisabeth Canisius, an Ontario paediatrician, argued that schools should be designated an essential service due to the spike in depression and other mental health issues she was seeing and hearing about from her colleagues.

“In-person learning is essential,” said Canisius, in an interview with Global News^{5Paediatrician talks about the mental health effects of Ontario’s latest school closures}. “School helps kids with their sense of belonging. That may be their only predictable space, so it represents so much for kids.”