Photo: Shaun Penner / EverythingGP staff

By Abby Zieverink

Mandatory Vaccine

GPPSD working on details of vaccination policy

Oct 29, 2021 | 2:27 PM

The Grande Prairie Public School Division is currently working on developing a mandatory proof of COVID-19 vaccination policy.

GPPSD Superintendent Sandy McDonald says the plan is to work on a policy that provides reasonable accommodations, which he says could include rapid testing for those who are unable to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Reasonability means we have to provide exemptions to those individuals who are eligible for exemptions for such a procedure, according to protected grounds and Alberta human rights legislation.”

This comes after a request from Alberta’s Minister of Health Jason Copping and Minister of Education Adriana LaGrange, in which divisions across the province were left to develop their own vaccination policies.

McDonald stresses the importance of these accommodations, in an effort to ensure student education maintains a top priority for the division.

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“As a school division we are an employer of 900 staff, and our job is to provide a safe workplace and our job is to support student learning and to facilitate quality instruction for our students,” he explained.

“So, we can’t do that if we’re coming up with an unreasonable procedure that will leave teachers and our other staff feeling like they can’t work in our division.”

Although there is not a plan in place yet, McDonald says administration will be working on a plan over the next couple of weeks to explore the concept of mandatory proof of vaccinations from a variety of different perspectives.

“We will be engaging with staff; we will be consulting with those impacted by the procedure; we will be working with other school divisions that have already created administrative procedures like this; we will also be getting advice from different sources.”

McDonald says well over 80 per cent of GPPSD staff have reported they are vaccinated against COVID-19.

GPPSD Board Chair Joan Nellis says the reason the board decided to pass the motion to direct administration to work on a mandatory vaccination policy, is in an effort to protect the safety of students, staff, and the community.

“We want to increase the safety in our schools, we want to support the community by increasing vaccination hopefully,” she explained.

“And we want to support our public health because, in Grande Prairie, our hospital has been overrun, and we want to do our part to help out with the public safety.”

With that, the division suggests the policy would be a temporary measure and will be looked at again in the future when the health of public safety is not at risk.