Health Minister Yves Bolduc says students will be bused to vaccination centres. (CBC)School boards are expressing frustration with the government’s plan to bus children to clinics for H1N1 flu vaccinations instead of providing the shots in schools.

The plan was confirmed Thursday by Health Minister Yves Bolduc, who said each board will be expected to hammer out the details.

"We want to be flexible," Bolduc said during a news conference in Quebec City.

No child under the age of 14 will be vaccinated without parental consent, and parents will still have the option to take their children to a vaccination clinic on their own, Bolduc said.

But Marcus Tabachnick, chairman of the Lester B. Pearson School Board, questioned whether the plan has been fully thought-out.

"The bottom line is, however it is done, it's got to get done, so we’re going to make it happen," he said. "But we’re not convinced this plan has been well worked through.

"We still haven’t been consulted on the issue. We have a number of safety and security concerns about the transport of students between the schools and the vaccination centres."

Tabachnick said the board would prefer to vaccinate students in their own schools.

"We’ve handled vaccination in the past, and it can be done. And, we know that it is safer for kids to keep them in school."

In-school clinics not considered practical

Dr. Horacio Arruda, Quebec's director of public health protection, said vaccinating students in their own schools is not a viable solution because of the need to keep the vaccine secure and effective.

'All we’ve been told to date is to keep a separate accounting of all costs related to H1N1 — with no indication there will be funding for it,'— Marcus Tabachnick, chairman of Lester B. Pearson School Board

"There is not enough vaccine [so] we don’t want to lose much vaccine," Arruda said.

"If we distribute them across thousands of thousands of sites we will lose vaccine, so we will have less available vaccine for the people to benefit from it.”

A spokesperson for Montreal’s largest French-language school board, the Commission scolaire de Montreal, said all five school boards on the island are working together on a plan. So far, the boards have decided that only high school students will be bused to vaccination clinics.

A spokesperson for the English Montreal School Board said it, too, would rather vaccinate students at their own schools.

Tabachnick said it is also still unclear who will pay for the measures schools have been forced to take to deal with the flu, including additional sanitation measures.

"All we’ve been told to date is to keep a separate accounting of all costs related to H1N1 — with no indication there will be funding for it," Tabachnick said. "It is going to add up to significant dollars with … the new transportation costs that are involved, with supplies we’ve had to buy, with personnel costs."

School boards expect government to take some responsibility, he said.

"Otherwise our only option is to take it from our operating budget, which is our school budget."

Bolduc would not guarantee additional government funding for schools to cope with the flu.

"We will tell you at the end who will pay," Bolduc said. "But in the end it is always the government who pays."

Government eases rule on doctor's note

Government officials also confirmed Thursday that civil servants will only need to present a medical certificate if they take more than seven consecutive sick days. Normally, civil servants must get a doctor's note to explain absences longer than three days, said Michel C. Doré, the deputy minister of public security.

Doré announced the revised rule during the government’s daily news conference on the H1N1 flu situation. Officials hope the change will prevent additional strain on the health-care system and serve as an example to other employers in the province.

“We want to avoid people showing up at flu clinics just to get a doctors’ note,” Doré said.