Proposed teacher restrictions worry Hutterite colonies

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This article was published 01/09/2020 (1843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hutterite colonies received disturbing news late last week, when the Department of Education sent a letter to Manitoba school divisions advising superintendents “they should plan to restrict teachers and staff in Hutterite schools who do not live in the community.”

That’s according to a letter from the Hutterian Safety Council COVID-19 Task Force to colonies.

The communication from the province allegedly spurred school divisions to send “missives” to teachers stating “all colonies in the province are closed to non-colony staff.”

“It caused the Hutterites communities to panic a bit,” said Kenny Wollmann, a member of the task force.

What appeared most troubling is that colonies — and there are roughly 125 in Manitoba — weren’t differentiated by risk level, as per the province’s colour-coded pandemic response plan.

“Although this was internal communication and very preliminary, it justifiably resulted in widespread concern. Divorced from the proper context of extensive and ongoing communication within the various governmental departments and (the safety council), it paints the picture that all Hutterites are indiscriminately labelled as red or high-risk schools,” the task force letter states.

“This is a problem because, while there certainly are Hutterite schools that fall into this category — whether because of COVID-19 cases or a lack of trusting and transparent communication — there are also communities who are taking all necessary precautions and have few or no COVID-19 cases.”

Beautiful Plains School Division chief executive officer and Supt. Jason Young stated in an email the school division meets formally with colony leaders at least twice a year and are in regular contact with all eight colonies throughout the year. On Friday, Young received the Department of Education’s letter, which he said informed the school division that “Public Health indicated we should plan for our staff who reside off the colony to participate in remote learning to commence the school year.”

Young said the school division then shared the email with the eight colony principals, which was followed up with a phone conversation with each one, as well as with at least one colony leader, such as a minister, secretary or German teacher, that same day.

“As with all our plans right now, they continue to evolve with the level identified in the provincial pandemic response plan,” Young said.

“We will be looking at and continuing to plan for the best way to follow the directives from Education and Public Health while continuing to work with our colonies to adapt a plan that works best for our students during these challenging times.”

Wollmann said the safety council is working very closely with Health and Education to ensure that Hutterite schools can open the safest way possible, whether that’s in-class learning, blended learning or remote learning. The population on colonies varies greatly, and Wollmann said well-defined and nimble assessment criteria and processes are still being determined with Public Health.

“The challenge before all parties at this point is to determine what the reality is on the ground within each community and what’s the best way of doing that,” Wollmann said.

That means dealing with a great number of schools over a significant geographic spread, with a diversity of situations.

“So, yeah, this is a challenge. I’ve always said that when it comes to COVID, ain’t nobody got an instruction manual beforehand. Everybody is struggling to make sense of things.” Wollmann said.

“In most cases, it would depend not so much on percentages. It would depend more on the reality on the ground. Like if it were somebody elderly, it would be a highly contained situation that doesn’t have an impact on the school in any way. There would be no reason for that to result in a red. But if it were somebody that were involved in the school, well, that would be a red,” he said.

Currently, there are 119 active cases of COVID-19 in what chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin calls “communal living” clusters.

When asked how many colonies are affected, Wollmann said the safety council and Manitoba Health are not revealing those numbers.

“Partly because these numbers are fluid. What we do say is that, in most cases, if there is COVID in a community, it is very, very quickly contained. And until such a time when it becomes an actual risk for the Manitoba public, those numbers are pretty much useless,” he said.

Hutterite schools range from a dozen to more than 60 students. The safety council wants to keep students, as well as teachers, safe. Wollmann said while an increasing number of communities staff their schools internally, the majority of schools are a blend of staff from the community and from outside the community.

“Probably the majority are non-Hutterites teaching in Hutterites school,” he said.

Beautiful Plains employs 14 teachers for the eight colony schools, of which some are colony members and reside on the colony. Approximately 210 students attend those schools.

In its letter to colonies, the safety council stated a risk assessment process would be developed to quickly identify low-risk communities.

However, Wollmann said the letter from the province intensified an already very serious situation.

“And, in a sense, it might be helpful to prompt some community leaders who haven’t been taking this as seriously as they ought to just step up to the plate and to lead the efforts to make sure that their community’s response to COVID is rigorous and keeps everybody safe,” he said.

The Brandon Sun also sent questions by email to the departments of Health and Education, as well as to the Brandon School Division, which staffs one colony, on Monday afternoon. Answers did not arrive by the deadline.

» mletourneau@brandonsun.com

» Michele LeTourneau covers Indigenous matters for The Brandon Sun under the Local Journalism Initiative, a federally funded program that supports the creation of original civic journalism.