Unless you鈥檝e spent a major part of your working life in a poorly ventilated 80-square-metre classroom with 25 or so sneezing, coughing (and in the interest of delicacy, we鈥檒l leave out the rest) kids, five hours a day for 190 or so days each year, the rest of this column might not make sense to you.
But if you have spent much of your adult life teaching in sa国际传媒鈥檚 public schools, or plan to, data from WorkSafe sa国际传媒 about jobs most likely to be affected by COVID-19 might worry you.
In showing the number of claims relating to COVID-19 exposure in various industries and occupations, WorkSafe sa国际传媒 ranks the number of verified and adjudicated claims in the education sector second only to health-care job claims and ahead of all other claims.
鈥淓xposure鈥� means the presence of a lab-confirmed COVID-19 case in a school during the period of communicability.
In total, sa国际传媒 has about 45,000 teachers who meet with 500,000 kids in those packed classrooms every one of those 190 days each year in sa国际传媒鈥檚 60 school districts.
Those are big potential contact numbers, which causes concern about why public school teachers seem to have been left off the vaccination priority lists of 鈥渇ront-line workers.鈥�
The larger problem is that nobody seems to really know what the actual symptomatic or asymptomatic situations are in our schools.
That鈥檚 partly because of the extreme 颅difficulty, if not actual impossibility, of contact tracing in a complex public-education environment.
And it puts teachers in a tough situation, especially with the average age of public school teachers in sa国际传媒 exceeding 45, with many teachers older than that.
The sa国际传媒 Teachers鈥� Federation says the lack of transparent data and effective 颅contact tracing is one of its big concerns about the work-related safety of members.
Without a clear understanding of how many symptomatic or asymptomatic cases there have been in schools, it is difficult for the union or the government or anybody to formulate a clear policy on the conduct of public education during the pandemic.
None of this implies any criticism of the response and amazing job accomplished, without delay or politicization, by sa国际传媒 health officials, government representatives and community medical authorities.
The recently published vaccination 颅priority list has brought a welcome 颅predictability about vaccination priorities that has kept the situation rational.
Nonetheless, there is some dismay from both teachers and parents that teachers don鈥檛 appear in either Phase 1 or Phase 2 of the published vaccination schedules along with other 鈥渇ront-line鈥� workers.
There鈥檚 no argument that case numbers alone demand that residents and staff of long-term care or assisted-living facilities, along with hospital health-care workers who fulfil a variety of COVID-related 颅responsibilities, should, based on outbreak numbers alone, top the lists.
The same could be said for remote, 颅isolated or even local Indigenous communities that have self-identified as virus 鈥渉otspots鈥� and should, in the interests of the broader communities, be prioritized.
But that鈥檚 not the point. It should be of great concern that 500,000 kids, most of whom have not yet reached an age that qualifies them for vaccination, are coming, untested, into the schools from their 颅communities to meet with those 45,000 teachers in confined, improperly 颅ventilated rooms.
So, what to do?
Moving teachers up the vaccination 颅priority list would be a good start, and yes, many other categories of workers have also been left off the list, especially those whose jobs require frequent contact with a 颅sometimes truculent and marginally co-operative public when it comes to mask-wearing or social distancing.
But those other workers do not spend their days in poorly ventilated classrooms with large groups of kids ages 5-18.
The pandemic hasn鈥檛 just shown that it鈥檚 important to keep schools fully functioning because they play an important role in educating students about disease prevention within their homes and communities. It has also cast light on the role schools play in enabling parent employment and keeping the wheels of the economy grinding.
Keeping teachers vaccinated and healthy and able to do their jobs in a potentially unhealthy environment would be an 颅important first step in ensuring schools remain operational.
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
