A trustee with the Greater Essex County District School Board wants to make sure teaching staff are being taken care of during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gale Simko-Hatfield has made a motion calling for a report on what the board is doing to support staff both personally and professionally with the stress and extra pressures associated with pandemic.
She says her motion was sparked by an article she read from the Canadian Mental Health Association.
"The scope, which has really been focused on first responders and health care workers, this really was one of the first times I saw in print where education employees were also recognized as being affected by this mental health crisis," she says.
Simko-Hatfield says we're a year into the pandemic and it's time to check in on staff.
"I know that we've done some great things as a school board to address the needs of our students and our parents and we did get some additional funding for mental health initiatives, but I think it's time now, we've been in this long enough and we need to examine the impact to our staff," says Simko-Hatfield.
She adds the board has an obligation to monitor the well being of its staff.
"I think we need to know if they are being overwhelmed," she says. "Teachers, our classroom support staff, our custodians, all of them, they are working as hard as they can to do the best they can and I think we just need to take a step back to make sure that we're providing them with the support and the services that they need."
Simko-Hatfield has also asked for information on the technology resources made available to teaching staff during the pandemic.
The full report is expected to come back to trustees for discussion in March.