In a pattern that has become very familiar in South Carolina, teachers are once again in the background, thanks to Governor Henry McMaster. He made teachers his latest political punching bag by announcing that educators will have to wait even longer to receive
Vaccines for covid19.
What makes this change really unsustainable is that McMaster is also demanding that teachers return to teaching full-time, in person, without allowing them to have access to a vaccine beforehand. As a parent, I understand how important it is to return to personal learning full time. The current hybrid model, in which classes are taught in person and online, basically doubles the workload of teachers, without a proportional increase in pay, and creates learning gaps that will take years to correct, if that will happen.
This model was never intended to be a long-term solution and has been around for a long time. We need to bring students back into the classroom, but it is our moral responsibility to take all reasonable safety precautions available when doing so, and that includes vaccinating teachers. If teachers continue to be pushed down the vaccination line instead of being treated like the essential workers they are, we run the risk of another school year being affected by this virus. The tax you will charge our children is truly unscrupulous, especially when we can avoid it.
Even before COVID-19, our educational system faced significant challenges. Teachers are very poorly paid and overworked, creating a shortage of teachers that the pandemic has turned into a total crisis. Requiring teachers to return to the classroom for full-time, face-to-face learning, without vaccination, would aggravate the personnel crisis, as many teachers will choose to leave the workplace for health and safety reasons. This, in turn, increases the scarcity that results in overcrowded classrooms and increased instability for students. Although mask requirements exist for all public schools, at least one school district is choosing not to apply health safety measures.
All of these factors indicate that school vacancies may not fully meet the standards that limit school transmission.
McMaster’s argument that it would be “unethical, immoral and completely unacceptable” to vaccinate teachers before veterans is nothing more than political ostentation. On the one hand, the elderly, who are predominantly retired, have an advantage that our teachers do not have: it is easier for retirees to distance themselves socially and stay at home. Teachers who work more than 40 hours a week in crowded conditions have an exponentially greater risk of contracting COVID-19. We must not set one group against another. We must prioritize both.
Most importantly, this argument implies a level of vaccine shortage that does not exist. South Carolina has about 265,000 doses of backup vaccine and we are receiving about 75,000 new doses each week. Since there are about 50,000 teachers across the state, we could vaccinate everyone and still have hundreds of thousands of doses left.
Teachers are not a large enough group to significantly slow the vaccination process for others. The only thing that is “unethical, immoral and unacceptable” is how Governor McMaster treated our teachers during this pandemic.
Because of the irresponsibility of many political leaders who have sown doubts about the effectiveness of masks and social detachment from the beginning, the safe reopening of our schools will require vaccines. McMaster’s narrative about the place of teachers at the launch of the vaccine will end up harming our children and our economic prospects, and demonstrates why South Carolina continues to occupy the last place in the country in education.
The legislature must immediately move our teachers to Phase 1A and return them to face-to-face learning as soon as possible so that we can deal with the learning loss caused by this pandemic. And then we need to elect leaders who will invest in our teachers instead of using them as pawns in a political game.
Joe Cunningham is a former congressman from the 1st district.