We asked 31 major Ontario school boards for their staff COVID-19 vaccination rates. Here’s what we found

Over a month into the school year, the province's largest school boards are reporting staff vaccination rates ranging from a high of 94.8 per cent to a low of 76 per cent.

But a Star analysis of 31 major boards has found inconsistencies in the way they report and present this information that make it difficult to compare rates between boards, and in most cases impossible for parents to know the rate of vaccination of teachers at their boards.

Despite provincial direction that public school board employees disclose their vaccination status, the Star found that over 15,000 staff have not done so, and, because boards don't break down the data by job category, it's not clear what these people do.

Overall rates of COVID-19 immunization among all staff at these boards are, for the most part, in line with or above the overall vaccination rate in the province. But boards say job breakdowns are private, or that they are not required to provide vaccination rates of teachers, who spend hours with unvaccinated children in elementary schools.

The rate of overall vaccination is a key metric to evaluate risk in the absence of a provincial mandate requiring all education workers who interact with children to be immunized. A few boards have brought in their own policies and said they will suspend staff who do not comply.

While parents aren't able to know if their child's individual teacher is vaccinated, lumping together all staff is also not that useful for them.

It doesn't make sense for boards to tell us what percentage of overall staff are vaccinated because we still don't know whether they are teachers who interact with our kids, or admin staff," said Claudia Wilson, who has two children enrolled at St. Benedict Catholic Elementary School in Ottawa, which recently declared an end to an outbreak that resulted in 37 student cases.

In my mind, it's either you tell us everything or you tell us nothing."

The 15,000 staff who have not provided their vaccination status works out to about seven per cent of the total number of people to whom these policies apply among the boards the Star surveyed. (Boards stress that many of these individuals are casual staff or those who have not worked this year.)

The board with the highest staff vaccination rate was the Ottawa Catholic School Board at 94.84 per cent (updated Wednesday).

The lowest was Toronto Catholic District School Board at 76 per cent (last updated Sept. 30). But these numbers include all staff and trustees and don't specify vaccination rates for job titles, such as teacher, that require close interaction with students.

None of the boards surveyed by the Star provide a public breakdown of vaccination rates for teachers, specifically. Boards say they are simply following the province's directions, which require only aggregated, depersonalized board-level data" to be reported publicly on a monthly basis or that privacy concerns prevent them from reporting teacher vaccination rates.

Only four of the 31 boards the Star contacted would provide any details on breakdown of teachers' vaccination status when asked: Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board (93 per cent), Upper Grand District School Board (97.8 per cent of permanent teaching staff), Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board (92 per cent), and Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board (just over 4,000" of 4,513 permanent teaching staff, according to spokesperson Bruce Campbell).

In an email to the Star, the Ministry of Health said data on staff vaccination rates is to be provided in aggregate form only without any identifying information, including job titles. Ministry spokesperson Bill Campbell said parents are free to ask if their child's teacher is fully vaccinated, and the teacher may voluntarily disclose this information."

Compounding the lack of transparency, of the boards the Star surveyed, many report staff vaccination levels in different, often confusing ways that make comparison difficult. Some keep rolling tallies of staff vaccination rates, while others make updates once a month.

For example, the first percentage displayed to parents visiting the York Region District School Board website is 92.8%" in large font with the words staff who submitted are fully vaccinated." But that figure is the percentage of staff who say they are fully vaccinated only out of those who have completed an attestation form. The true staff vaccination rate, 81.2 per cent, is published lower down in a chart along with other figures.

In contrast, the Toronto Catholic District School Board reports both the percentage of fully vaccinated individuals out of those who have submitted an attestation form, 90 per cent, as well as the actual percentage of total staff who are vaccinated, 76 per cent, as of Sept. 30.

Other school boards, such as the Halton District School Board and the Peel District School Board, don't publish any percentages. Instead, these boards publish just raw figures, such as total number of individuals to whom vaccination disclosure applies and the number who have attested to being fully vaccinated, leaving parents to do their own math.

The Star also found that some boards, including the Ottawa Catholic School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board, lump together the number of staff who have attested to being fully vaccinated with or without supporting documentation, further muddying the waters.

Conversely, other boards, such as the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board and the Durham District School Board, more transparently break down the numbers showing how many staff have attested to being fully vaccinated with and without supporting documentation.

In the case of the TCDSB, spokesperson Shazia Vlahos told the Star the board has set up a team to follow up with individuals who have not submitted supporting documentation, as well as those who have not yet completed attestation forms.

In August, Ontario's chief medical officer, Dr. Kieran Moore, announced a COVID-19 vaccination disclosure requirement for all publicly funded school board staff for this school year. The policy says they must do one of the following three things: provide proof of full vaccination against COVID-19; produce a documented medical reason for not receiving the vaccine; or complete a COVID-19 vaccination educational program on the benefits of the vaccine. Staff who are not fully vaccinated are required to complete rapid antigen tests twice a week.

Already one board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, has issued stern warnings to unvaccinated staff that they risk suspension without pay if they do not comply with twice-weekly rapid-test requirements.

The Toronto District School Board has gone a step further with its own vaccine mandate, requiring all staff, trustees and other individuals who have contact with staff or students to be vaccinated by Nov. 1 or face home assignment without pay.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is requiring all staff to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 15. Employees that have refused to disclose their vaccination status, who responded that they are unvaccinated or have not completed the vaccine attestation are not working directly with students, according to spokesperson Darcy Knoll.

Some staff" who did not provide proof of vaccination by Sept. 30 were placed on administrative leave without pay, Knoll added, but the exact number is not available at this time."

There is no privacy legislation that prevents school boards from disclosing vaccination rates by job category, says Avner Levin, a privacy law expert and a professor at Ryerson University's Lincoln Alexander School of Law.

I can't accept that there's a privacy reason for any of this," he said. The key element of withholding information is if it can identify an individual. Statistical aggregate information cannot identify an individual."

In fact, there is a provision in provincial privacy legislation that allows for an organization to provide information if there is a compelling health and safety purpose, Levin noted.

There's this misconception that COVID is harmless to children, but we know there is long COVID and PIMS (Pediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome) that causes massive inflammation all over the body," he said. So there's a very compelling reason both for the kids and for their parents who might catch it from kids to know specifically who at their school" is putting them at risk.

Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, a family physician based in Ottawa who has organized mass vaccination clinics, said parents deserve to know if their kids are going to school with staff who may not be fully vaccinated.

There's a total lack of transparency," she said. And it shouldn't be left up to the parents to then scramble and try to figure out, well, what's safest for my child right now?"

This problem stems from the province not wanting to be proactive" on vaccine mandates and leaving it up to individual boards to decide if the vaccine will be required for staff, she added. Schools have been open now for weeks and without a consistent set of rules for boards on vaccines, it puts the whole thing at risk, it's like a house of cards that's waiting to fall."

In New York City, meanwhile, all staff in public schools needed to get a first dose of the vaccine by Sep. 27 or they would be placed on unpaid leave, which has prompted thousands to get the shot.

Parent Nora Fayed said a lack of transparency, clarity and standardization in tracking vaccinations at school boards means there is no good evidence base for making high-stakes policies and decisions.

That's a really big problem," said Fayed, who along with other concerned parents last spring formed the Coalition for Kids, a group that advocates for child-centred, data-driven pandemic responses in Ontario. For some reason, it seems to be acceptable to have a lack of standardized data when it comes to our kids in schools."

Fayed, who is also a professor at Queen's University and an occupational therapist who specializes in child well-being research, added that policy makers need to make decisions about what is in the best interests of children.

And the only way to do that very well and in an ethical way is to have good data, and we don't have it."

Kenyon Wallace is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @KenyonWallace or reach him via email: kwallace@thestar.ca

May Warren is a Toronto-based breaking news reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @maywarren11