School decision-makers missed the mark with pandemic policies, say parents

It's been several weeks since Quebec lifted its mask mandate for schools — just as students returned from spring break — but Katherine Korakakis continues to feel a bit nervous as her daughter Bella sits in class this week without a mask. 

Though her 11-year-old agreed to keep one on for two weeks post-break (thinking of how many classmates had travelled) and despite her cautious optimism about easing restrictions, the Montreal parent felt the province's decision to drop the school mask mandate at that time was yet another frustrating pandemic policy concerning kids.

"Taking the masks away so fast after spring break? That was not putting our children in the best position possible," said Korakakis, who serves as president of Quebec's English Parents' Committee Association. 

From debates over masking in schools to students repeatedly bounced between in-person and remote learning, many parents feel Canadian policy makers have let our children down during the pandemic. 

In a recent survey conducted between March 1 and 4 of this year, Angus Reid Institute in partnership with CBC News asked 2,550 Canadian adults about how they fared amid COVID-19. (A probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)

Sixty-seven per cent of the parent respondents (those with children under age 18) said policy makers have not given enough consideration to the well-being of children when making decisions during the pandemic. That figure rose even higher — to 72 per cent — for respondents with children specifically aged six to 12 years old.

Beyond the masks situation, other school-related concerns also require prompt attention, Korakakis said, from declines in student mental and physical health to learning gaps that have developed or worsened.

"The pandemic really shed the light on … all the areas that need to be improved and I don't see a plan in place to address any of those needs."

With so much of a child's life revolving around school, it's not surprising that parents questioned school-related decision-making in the past two years, said Angus Reid Institute president Shachi Kurl, from Vancouver. 

"When we think of school not just as a place to learn but as a place for early life development, it's little wonder that parents — no matter where they're coming from in terms of their ideological stance on the spectrum or their economic stance or their own educational stance — [felt] frustration around what policy makers are doing."

Part of that parental frustration rests with our polarized landscape. Some parents think mask mandates are a good idea, while others don't, "so when they're being dropped, that's problematic. When they're being retained, that's [also] problematic," said Tracy Vaillancourt, a professor of counselling psychology at the University of Ottawa, chair of the COVID-19 Task Force for the Royal Society of Canada, and Canada Research Chair in school-based mental health and violence prevention.

But she said child advocates like herself have also been "quite frustrated … about how [children] have not been prioritized when decisions have been made about their health and wellness." 

"A lot of times politicians give lip service to saying that they're going to prioritize children... When we put money toward an issue, we say that we prioritize that issue; we value that it's an important aspect to address. And that's not happening. There's actually cuts happening in these areas instead of added funding."

Child mental health, for instance, was an issue on the radar even before the pandemic, Vaillancourt said. She wants to see government and school officials think more holistically, funding strategies to ensure students catch up academically from pandemic learning loss, but also prioritizing child and youth mental health.