The Superintendent for School District 73 says it will be up to Elections BC whether or not schools are used as polling stations for the Oct. 24 election.

Terry Sullivan tells NL News he hasn’t heard anything about whether that will happen this time around because of COVID-19 concerns, but he says they are prepared for the possibility.

“If the province indicates that they are going to use our schools as polling places, we will put that in place and provide the staffing and the resources needed to make sure that when school started on Monday it was going to be safe and clean,” he said.

He notes if SD73 schools are designated as polling stations, it is likely that only the gym and maybe a washroom will be used.

“We would certainly do extensive cleaning before and after. That is just part of what we do now and we’re just doing this in every school, all day, every day,” Sullivan said.

“If [Elections BC] decide to follow the practice they’ve always followed in the past, then we’ll be quite prepared.”

Chief Electoral Officer Anton Boegman says he understands the concerns that parents and teachers might have about schools being used for the election during the pandemic.

“In recognition of that we are going to limit our use of schools to weekend days. So the first weekend of advanced voting is Saturday and Sunday and then on voting day which is on a Saturday,” he said.

“These are days when students are not present in the schools, when it’s possible to make sure that the necessary cleaning is done before and after the use of these facilities by voters.”

Boegman says schools are important to the election process, noting that 44 per cent of polling stations during the 2017 provincial election were in schools.

“We did make sure that we spoke with staff at the Ministry of Education and with Dr. [Bonnie] Henry’s office about how to integrate our safe voting plans with the safe school plans,” he added.