Are schools doing all they can to protect kids?

Why is Nova Scotia’s Department of Education handing out cheap masks that don’t appear to meet the latest public health recommendations?

That’s not the only question that arose as public school students went back to classes this week, but let’s start there.

Omicron is extremely contagious. The masks many of us have been wearing since the spring of 2020 just don’t cut it anymore.

Canada’s public health agency now recommends masks be three layers, with “a third, middle layer of filtertype fabric, like non-woven polypropylene, to improve filtration.”

The province’s own website mirrors that advice.

That’s because non-woven polypropylene provides far more effective air filtration. Woven materials have gaps, so they aren’t as effective against airborne viruses like COVID-19’s Omicron variant.

What’s in the masks — selling for US 99 cents apiece on their Chinese manufacturer’s website — handed out in schools Jan. 17?

Yes, they have three layers. If they were a sandwich, the bread slices would be the cotton sheets. But what about the middle?

So, I cut one apart to find out. Inside was a thin sheet of polyester, from the look of it woven into a regular pattern. Crucially, there were multiple gaps in the fabric visible to the naked eye. (Check out the photo accompanying this column.)

Not much of an Omicron deterrent there.

The distributed masks also don’t contain flexible nose pieces — also recommended by the federal agency — which can help provide a better fit to an individual’s face.

No wonder so many parents were upset.

Many say the masks appear to be identical to the ones handed out in schools in September. I asked the province several times on Jan. 18 if that were so, but I never got a straight answer.

In COVID terms, that was eons ago. Since then, Omicron has rewritten the playbook.

But that’s all just the tip of the iceberg. According to Stacey Rudderham, co-chair of the Facebook group Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education, parents, students and some teachers reported a wide variety of other problems with the mask rollout.

If there’s a theme, it’s inconsistency.

Masks were handed out in two sizes, adult and child, probably based on grade level. But children, even the same age, come in different sizes. Many kids say they got masks that were too big or too small for their faces.

As the government’s own website notes, masks must be fitted properly to be effective.

At some schools, parents reported their children weren’t allowed to wear the superior mask protection that they had brought from home, such as N95 masks. Instead, they were reportedly forced to switch to school-issued ones.

At many other schools, however, students apparently could use their own masks without issue.

If true, it’s ridiculous to prevent students from using the best protection available.

Enforcement of wearing masks varies, Rudderham told me. Some schools are much stricter about requiring students to wear masks and properly distance than others. Others seem to let a lot go.

The inconsistencies go on. According to Rudderham, they include:

• Inconsistent air ventilation (some schools have apparently needed to open windows, despite the month, leading to kids complaining about being cold).

• Inconsistent rules on sending symptomatic students home (some schools do, some don’t, she says).

• Inconsistent approaches to exams (some schools are allowing online exams, others refuse to, she says).

Add it all up and it means additional stress for everyone — students, teachers and parents.

It’s also not fair, especially for students whose grades are crucial to post-secondary education.

The last factor is the big question of whether schools should even be open right now.

Looking across the country, it’s obvious there are marked differences of opinion.

Most provinces have held off restarting classes. Nova Scotia is among four (with Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba) that have gone ahead.

Opinion is pretty much split among parents in this province.

Many can’t afford to take time off their jobs or feel online schooling didn’t really work for their children.

Others, however, worry about their children learning in a safe educational environment, especially after the province announced late last year that it would no longer do contact tracing in schools. Some parents fear if their kids catch Omicron at school, it could be passed to a relative in vulnerable health. Here’s one last observation. Parents are not in the dark about what’s happening beyond our borders with Omicron, schools and issues like mask construction.

The Internet is a useful thing.

And since there’s nothing more precious to parents than their children, government officials should expect that when they do things like hand out masks with middle layers that look like cheesecloth, their actions are rightly going to be heavily scrutinized.