14 Alberta schools exempt from masking rules, province says

Fourteen Alberta schools have been granted school-wide mask exemptions, but the provincial government won't reveal which schools have exemptions. 

Masks are required for Alberta students in Grade 4 and up, and are recommended for kindergarten to Grade 3 students. Schools may also choose to create additional masking requirements beyond what the province requires.

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw is able to grant masking exemptions for entire schools — including students, staff and visitors — that meet certain conditions. 

On Monday, Alberta Health spokesperson Jason Maloney confirmed 14 schools have exemptions but declined to share the names of the schools, citing privacy concerns.

He said any school in the province is able to apply for an exemption. Alberta Health was still looking into the number of applications received to date at the time of publication. 

"To be exempted from the masking requirement by the chief medical officer of health, a school needs to implement an alternate COVID-19 safety plan," Maloney said in an email.

He said the plan, which is required to be posted online, must ensure that all students, staff and visitors maintain a minimum of two metres distance from one another while inside the school.

Individual students can obtain mask exemptions from a physician, psychologist or nurse practitioner if they are experiencing certain health conditions. 

Alberta Health is not tracking how many individual mask exemptions have been granted provincewide. 

Alberta Teachers' Association president Jason Schilling said he knew that some school-wide exemptions had been granted, but he said his organization doesn't have details on how the province has made those decisions.

He said it's reflective of a broader lack of transparency and consistency in managing COVID-19 issues in schools throughout the pandemic.

Schilling described the province's mandatory COVID measures for schools as the "bare minimum," and said leaving any further safety efforts up to individual school boards' discretion has put boards in a tough position.

"And then when you start getting exemptions for some areas or for some schools, that also causes a little bit of confusion because you could sometimes have schools literally across the street doing completely different things," Schilling said. "And that just adds to the stress of what everybody is going through right now."

Facing pressure from parents last week, Buffalo Trails Public Schools in eastern Alberta added a statement to its return-to-school plan specifying that students with mask exemptions will not be discriminated against or segregated.