As someone who was born and raised in #Alberta and has been working to support schools in Ontario through the #COVID19 pandemic, I have significant concerns as Alberta's students & teachers head back to the classroom today. 1/7

Currently in #Alberta with incredibly high community rates of #COVID19 there is a lot of room for improvement but there are 3 things that are truly unacceptable and should be remedied immediately: 2/7

1) Lack of robust & dedicated contact tracing for schools. In November contact tracers were overwhelmed & the province stopped tracing in schools. School administrators were tasked with contact tracing. 3/7 https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-misses-year-end-goal-of-having-1800-contact-tracers-citing-training-bottleneck

In the current state with high case counts and large class sizes, without trained, dedicated contact tracing and testing, how can teachers, students and families have confidence that schools will remain safe? 4/7

2) Only giving Alberta teachers a cloth mask. Teachers should be provided with MEDICAL MASKS to wear at all times inside schools. 5/7

3) Class sizes. There is still debate about transmissibility of COVID in kids. But we know that high school students are similar to adults. Would we ever allow 30 adults to sit together for hours in a small room wearing only cloth masks? In case you're not sure the answer is NO

School is so important and solutions aren't always easy but these are things that can and should be addressed immediately. @AdrianaLaGrange @RachelNotley @shoffmanAB @jkenney @CMOH_Alberta @albertateachers @CarrieTait @ByJamesKeller @ClaireHalleyR @calphonso @kellygrant1 7/7