Saturday September 4, 2021 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke, B.Sc., Editor | Island Social Trends
As students head back to K-12 public and private education and young adults head to post-secondary campuses, the challenges of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic loom large.
Each of the 60 school districts in BC and each post-secondary campus has customized their handling of COVID-19 safety and protocols (e.g. masks, social distancing, vaccination), based on the BC public health orders.
Guiding students, parents & staff:
On their websites, all these school districts and post-secondary institutions have provided details of their COVID pandemic requirements.
To some degree, the K-12 school districts seem to be treating the COVID scenario as ‘business as usual’, hoping to get on with their school year with a semblance of back to normal.
Meanwhile, the post-secondary campuses are more up-front about the challenges and stated requirements. Notably the Simon Fraser University has plastered their website main pages with the COVID information, can’t miss it. While still on the main page, the Vancouver Island University website packages their message as a ‘safe return’ to campus, not leading with the word COVID.
Royal Roads University has chosen the approach of giving COVID-19 the top-left link spot on their main-page. Three Island Health mobile COVID clinics will be offered on the RRU campus this month (Sept 8, 15 & 22 — open to the public as well), but that’s not featured on the main page.
COVID-protocol links:
For south Vancouver Island (and post-secondary more broadly in BC), here is a list of COVID-information webpages:
K-12 (South Vancouver Island):
Post-secondary (Victoria, Nanaimo, BC Lower Mainland):
- UVic (Victoria)
- Camosun (Victoria/Saanich)
- RRU (Colwood)
- VIU (Nanaimo)
- UBC (Vancouver)
- SFU (Burnaby | Surrey | Vancouver)
