Private school students are being unfairly excluded

The Ontario government deserves credit for its efforts to keep students safe and to prevent the spread of COVID-19 after the Christmas break.

The recent announcement to make 11 million rapid antigen tests available in kits of five for students to take home over the December holidays will assist parents and schools to prevent outbreaks in early January — especially with the Omicron variant now in the province.

“The government has worked in partnership with the chief medical officer of health to ensure our schools remain open and safe,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said. “We’ll continue to do whatever it takes to achieve that objective.”

The minister said the right words, but the provincial government’s actions haven’t matched the rhetoric.

Around 93 per cent of Ontario students will be eligible to benefit from this program. But the other seven per cent of Ontario students, numbering more than 150,000, will be excluded.

Why? Because they don’t attend the “right” schools. They attend schools that don’t receive provincial government funding and therefore don’t qualify to participate. So, when public health officials distribute the kits, 150,000 children will just get a lump of coal.

Why do our minister of education, minister of health and our premier continue to treat this pandemic as though it is a public school health crisis rather than public health crisis? The virus does not discriminate on school attended. Neither should this government.

Already, at least one non-publicly funded school in Ontario has voluntarily gone to virtual learning for a short period because of COVID. With the holidays approaching and a new variant circulating, what risk is Ontario’s government creating by leaving 150,000 kids without access to these testing kits?

What happens when they unwittingly pass on COVID to a family member, another child, or someone else over the holidays? Wouldn’t everyone in Ontario be better off if these kids also had access to rapid COVID tests? Ontario’s policy isn’t just unfair, it creates gaps in public health measures, which could perpetuate the crisis.

The province also perpetuates a bizarre situation. Excluded schools must still report suspected and confirmed COVID cases to public health authorities and provide records to officials. Yet they will receive zero help in preventing infections and outbreaks as winter sets in.

Frankly, it is incomprehensible that this government would persist in supporting the health needs of 93 per cent of Ontario students and leave the remaining seven per cent of students to their own devices.

This discriminatory treatment appears to be based on the flawed assumption that any student that attends a school other than a public school or an Indigenous school is rich and thus able to take care of purchasing their own tests. Even if they all came from rich families — and the vast majority do not — rich kids in public schools and Indigenous schools are not being excluded from receiving the tests.

It is long overdue that this government stop the illogical, discriminatory health-care treatment of students during this pandemic. All students in all schools — for the sake of the health of the entire province — should have access to the rapid antigen holiday testing kits.

The government’s stated goal for this testing is to “keep schools safe and open for inperson learning.” It can start now to by actually making holiday testing kits available to all Ontario students. Surely it is in the best interest of all Ontarians if in-person learning stays open for all Ontario students — regardless of the school they attend.