In a statement, a senior Baker adviser criticized the idea as unfair to other groups qualified to reserve vaccines.
“The Baker-Polito administration is dismayed that, despite reasonable efforts to prioritize vaccination of educators, teacher unions continue to demand that the Community remove hundreds of thousands of vaccines from the sickest, oldest and most vulnerable residents of Massachusetts and refer them to ‘member unions, 95 percent of whom are under 65, ”said Tim Buckley, the consultant.
“The government begs the unions to do the math: the state only receives 150,000 first doses every week,” added Buckley. “There are about one million eligible residents, made up of educators, the elderly and people with serious health problems. Diverting hundreds of thousands of vaccines to an exclusive distribution system, only for teachers, would deny the most vulnerable and most disproportionately affected residents hundreds of thousands of vaccines ”.
Union leaders retaliated, calling the characterization of the government misleading. Teachers, they said, are seeking a select portion of vaccines for educators, and do not intend to expel other groups.
“The mischaracterization of the government of educators, as if in some way seeking to get vaccines out of the sick and the elderly, is false and defamatory,” said the American Teachers Federation, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Boston Teachers Union in a statement set. “We suggest. . . that some of the doses assigned to educators through mass vaccination sites be sent to local communities so that they can be administered to school staff efficiently and effectively at the local level, with the facilitation of firefighters and nurses ”.
Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association, argued that if the state cannot vaccinate hundreds of thousands of educators, it must delay the mandatory return to face-to-face learning – April 5 for elementary school and April 28 for high school – until after the April vacation for all series.
“We thought we could have more vaccines for educators and through local programs,” said Najimy. “Since this is not happening, we have to shift our expectations to realistic schedules.”
Colleen Quinn, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said Massachusetts “is not going to delay the full reopening”. State officials pointed to the guidance of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that teachers do not need to be vaccinated for schools to open.
The struggle for vaccination of educators rekindled an old rivalry between the governor and the teachers’ unions, which in 2016 successfully campaigned against a referendum issue supported by Baker to expand charter schools.
At a news conference on Thursday, Baker said he is firmly opposed to the school’s vaccination proposal, arguing that teachers “were looking for their own vaccine and were not participating in the process in which everyone participates.”
“We are not going to play that game,” added Baker.
In the early stages of the vaccine’s launch, other groups were immunized in their workplaces, including hospital staff and nursing home staff.
Baker urged schools to reopen, pointing to high absenteeism, learning gaps and increased isolation and mental illness among students during nearly a year of remote learning. President Biden also made reopening schools a priority, but emphasized vaccinating teachers as the key to that goal.
Teacher unions have already secured significant victories in recent weeks. Baker has long resisted setting a date for teachers to become eligible for appointments, agreeing to March 11 only after Biden said he wanted educators to be vaccinated this month. Teachers began scheduling appointments at state units on Thursday, and will be able to request appointments through the new pre-registration system on Friday. Since last week, they have also been able to book shots through a federal program at CVS pharmacies under Biden’s order.
In another accommodation for teachers, Baker announced on Wednesday that mass vaccination sites would be dedicated to exclusive consultations for educators on four weekend days next month.
The unions, however, have argued that the 25,000 vaccines that will be available on educators’ exclusive days are inadequate to serve everyone, forcing educators to seek consultations elsewhere that may require time off. In addition, they say, they will not have enough time to be vaccinated before classrooms fill up.
“The governor is asking us for patience while we wait for the vaccines, but he himself is not being patient about filling our classrooms with students,” said Beth Kontos, president of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.
Some communities are reserving doses for teachers on their own. On Thursday and Friday, for example, hundreds of doses were largely reserved for teachers on the South Shore at a regional location at Marshfield Fairgrounds. The Boston Public Schools also announced on Wednesday that it would begin operating a vaccination clinic for educators soon, using supplies from the state’s city.
Vickie Schlosser, a music teacher at Scituate High School, said that her students attended a limited hybrid base throughout the year, but that teachers should be vaccinated completely before schools become more crowded.
“I definitely feel more comfortable with the idea that everyone is back to school, fully vaccinated,” said Schlosser, who received his first injection of the Pfizer vaccine in Marshfield on Thursday. “If all teachers are fully vaccinated, it will make a big difference.”
The groups of teachers have the support of 48 state legislators, who signed a letter on Thursday calling their plan “the safest way for a fast, efficient and affordable vaccination”. The letter also asked the administration to allow more flexibility in reopening schools because “some districts will be ready to reopen faster than others”.
But some parents have become increasingly impatient with the teachers’ vaccine requirements, saying that immunizations have become politicized and that their children are the ones who pay the highest price.
“I feel [that the teachers unions have] missed an opportunity to really lead heroically here, ” said Neatherly Brenzel, a mother from Jamaica Plain who has four children in Boston schools. She said that the unions negotiated very strictly during the pandemic before a return to learning: “The union did not give these teachers. . . the chance to do that and really be heroes for the city and families with children. “
Trade unions defend their efforts during the pandemic to make schools safer for personal learning, ensuring, for example, that all bathroom dispensers are equipped with soap.
Sharon Harrison, a nurse at the William Carter School in Boston, said she understands both sides of the dispute, but with schools reopening, “teachers really need the vaccines.”
“I can’t tell the governor how to manage his things, but. . . what do we do? “she said.” We can’t do [the vaccine] ourselves.”
Meghan Irons, Naomi Martin and Matt Stout, from the Globe team, contributed to this report.
Adam Vaccaro can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @adamtvaccaro.