COLOMBIA – All school districts in South Carolina are working with a local vaccine supplier COVID-19 to receive vaccines in the arms of employees whenever they qualify, said state superintendent Molly Spearman on February 12.
“We will be ready to go,” she said.
Districts have acted quickly in the past two weeks to make deals with local suppliers, which include hospitals and pharmacies. Less than half had developed a plan earlier this month, when Spearman’s office asked local authorities to prepare and offered to help.
No plan will work in a state of 81 school districts ranging in size from less than 600 students in rural Blackville-Hilda to more than 74,000 students in Greenville County.
Spearman presented the four general scenarios of the district plans:
• The health care provider who takes care of everything, including all the setup and staff, whether at a school or hospital.
• The provider and the district work together.
• The provider only provides doses and school nurses who deal with vaccines in schools.
• Several small districts combined in a central community center.
It is not yet known when elementary and high school employees will be eligible for an injection.
Teachers are currently listed in the next phase, 1B, among the “essential frontline workers”, who also include daycare centers, police, firefighters, bus drivers, post offices, grocery stores and farm workers.
Teachers asked to be in a special priority class, to help more schools to open classrooms fully and keep them open.
Just over half of South Carolina’s 1,266 public schools offer an entire week of face-to-face learning.
Legislation passed by the Senate this week would force the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control to make employees of K-12 schools and day care centers eligible whenever the bill becomes law. But it is not clear whether this could happen before the state moves on to the next phase. A House subcommittee will hold a hearing on the measure on Tuesday.
Part of the delay in the potential to become law is a promised veto from Governor Henry McMaster, who has repeatedly said he believes it is wrong to put teachers ahead of seniors who are much more susceptible to falling ill or dying of COVID-19.
South Carolina’s 1.3 million people currently eligible for an injection include 309,000 people aged 65 to 69 who recently became eligible on February 8. The teachers were furious when McMaster overtook that group of elderly people ahead of them.
The Senate proposal would add about 150,000 K-12 employees and childcare to the eligibility list.
Some 71,000 elementary and high school employees, or less than 60% of them across the state, are currently willing to roll up their sleeves, Spearman said.
follow Seanna Adcox on Twitter at @seannaadcox_pc.