The Toronto District School Board says teachers have engaged in a work stoppage on Monday after a confirmed coronavirus outbreak at a Scarborough elementary school, leaving almost 200 students without teachers.
Glamorgan Junior Public School currently has nine staff members and two students who have tested positive for the virus. The infected individuals have been away from school for about one week, TDSB spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz said.
Schwartz-Maltz said 10 of the cases detected were found in one wing of the school and one case, a child in a junior grade, was from the main part of the school. A total of 58 people are in self-isolation.
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“Toronto Public Health has determined that while this is an outbreak, the school does not need to be closed and so we continued on,” Schwartz-Maltz said.
“The teachers feel differently and they are on a work-stoppage today.”
The TDSB said it has brought in several vice principals from surrounding schools to help out with the approximately 186 students at the school on Monday. Normally there are about 278 students in class, Schwartz-Maltz said.
Schwartz-Maltz also said the teachers contacted the Ministry of Labour last week. The ministry came to the school and determined that the site was safe, she said.
“None of the teachers are working today.”
However, the TDSB spokesperson said that the school is still open.
Schwartz-Maltz said that there was communication regarding the outbreak to staff, students and parents last week, but how communication was made leading up to Monday morning’s teacher walk-out remains unclear.
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Isabel Zaw-Tun, a parent of a Grade 4 student and Grade 6 student at Glamorgan Junior Public School, said she came to the school to pull her children out.
“I feel really unsatisfied with the communication that I had with the school,” Zaw-Tun said, adding that she first found out about a positive case last week from her children at the dinner table.
“I kept hearing different information from what my kids were telling me and then what the school was telling me,” Zaw-Tun said.
“It just seems like there is a problem with communication between parents and the schools and that’s really frustrating to me because I want to make sure that my kids are safe and that the people taking care of them are keeping me in the loop.”
Zaw-Tun said she believes the COVID-19 outbreak is serious if the teachers are refusing to work.