Letetsia A. Fox, President of the Los Angeles 500 Chapter of the California School Employees Association receives its first COVID-19 Modern vaccine from nurse Sosse Bedrossian, director of nursing services at LAUSD.
Al Seib | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
President Joe Biden on Tuesday asked states to prioritize vaccinating teachers and school staff against Covid-19, with the goal of administering at least one dose to each educator and employee across the country by the end of March. .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have urged states to prioritize teacher vaccinations, but some public health experts have criticized the agency for not making vaccination a prerequisite for reopening K-12 schools.
“Let me be clear, we can reopen schools if the right measures are taken even before employees are vaccinated,” said Biden on Tuesday at the White House. “But, over and over, we hear from educators and parents who are concerned about this.”
To help speed up the safe reopening of schools, Biden said “we are going to treat face-to-face learning as an essential service that it is and that means getting essential workers, educators, school staff, daycare workers, vaccinating them. ”
“My challenge for all states, territories, the District of Columbia is this: we want every educator, school employee, daycare assistant to receive at least one injection by the end of March,” he added.
Biden said he will use the federal pharmacy partnership, which was established with retail pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens to expand access to Covid-19 vaccines, to make injections available to teachers and staff at preschools. This would give these workers the opportunity to receive the vaccine, even in states where they do not meet local eligibility requirements.
His statement is the strongest appeal and the most ambitious timetable presented by the federal government for states to prioritize educators and school officials, although it does not have a mandate to do so. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, welcomed the president’s comments as a concrete step towards reopening schools for face-to-face learning.
“What a tremendous relief to have a president who is facing this moment of crisis,” Weingarten said in a statement. “Vaccination is a key ingredient for reopening schools safely, and this is the administration taking steps to increase vaccination for educators, which is great news for everyone who wants to learn at school.”
As doses of Covid-19 vaccines remain scarce, states are rationing them to priority groups, mostly essential frontline workers, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. Although the CDC makes recommendations on which groups should receive the vaccine first, states ultimately make their own decisions.
The CDC recommended that teachers be vaccinated in the phase 1b group, which includes all people aged 75 and over, as well as “essential frontline workers”. But some states have excluded teachers and school officials from their definition of essential frontline workers.
Although the country’s top health agency recommends that states give priority to vaccinating teachers, the director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said that teachers who are not being vaccinated should not be an obstacle to the reopening of schools. She said that if schools follow the public health precautions established by the CDC, teachers and staff can safely return to face-to-face learning.
However, based on the parameters set by the CDC, about 90% of schools in the country are in counties with substantial levels of dissemination where the CDC says it is not safe for schools to reopen fully for face-to-face learning.