There has been a heated debate over the Massachusetts priority vaccine schedule. Complaints that educators were not being vaccinated before got higher last week state officials have announced that they plan to force districts to return from elementary school to face-to-face instruction five days a week for the next month.
More than 30 other states are allowing teachers to be vaccinated. In Massachusetts, teachers are scheduled to become eligible in the next phase of implementation, although there is no specific date set.
But even as state teachers’ unions and state legislators urged Baker to put teachers in line, the governor said the state’s limited supply of vaccine means it still cannot prioritize tens of thousands of teachers. Baker defended his timeline, emphasizing the CDC’s guidance that it is safe for teachers to return to classrooms without vaccination.
“Learning in the classroom is the best and safest place for students, and public health data continues to prove that schools have a very low risk of transmitting COVID when security protocols are followed,” said a port of the governor on Tuesday.
State officials did not immediately answer questions on Tuesday night about how Biden’s announcement will change the state’s vaccine plans.
The federal government also seems ready to solve the supply problem that Baker cited as a major barrier: Biden on Tuesday also pledged to provide vaccine doses to teachers directly at pharmacies.
Teachers’ unions and their allies quickly praised the president – and say they expect state officials to meet his challenge for administer at least one dose of vaccine to all teachers by the end of the month.
“It makes me feel that our president values education as a priority and I want our governor to value us as a priority,” said Beth Kontos, president of the American Federation of Teachers of Massachusetts. “I haven’t seen it yet, and I hope it turns the corner.”
The Mayor, Ronald Mariano, and the President of the Senate Karen E. Spilka said Baker needs to focus on vaccinating teachers instead of forcing him to be in person.
Spilka said on Tuesday that if Baker wants teachers to come back, “we need an aggressive vaccination program for teachers and staff, and we need it this month.” And Mariano, noting that he was “encouraged” with Biden’s plan for educators, said “we have a lot of work to do to restore confidence to face-to-face learning, and this does not happen by forcing the reopening of neighborhoods, but by vaccinating teachers and employees promptly. “
Twenty-one state lawmakers wrote to Baker on Monday, saying that the state’s 72,000 teachers, as well as school administrators and staff, should receive doses of Johnson & Johnson’s newly approved single vaccine “so that when they are forced to go back to the classroom until [the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] it’s safe.”
When asked about supply limitations, lawmakers said the state simply should not require teachers to return to school in person if there were not enough doses.
“April is not a realistic goal when they know there is no offer,” said state deputy Brandy Fluker Oakley, a Democrat from Mattapan and a former professor.
Education commissioner Jeff Riley’s plan calls for primary schools to return full-time in person in April, with older students following. Before Riley can order the return full-time, his plan needs approval from the State Council for Elementary and Secondary Education, which is due to be voted on Friday.
The administration provided schools with other resources, including a testing program.
Despite the uncertainty about how many doses of the Johnson & Johnson Massachusetts vaccine will receive, the new influx of doses is already increasing pressure on Baker to prioritize teachers.
Massachusetts teacher unions have been lobbying state officials for weeks to join most other states to make teachers eligible for vaccines. Some or all of the educators are already eligible for the vaccine in 34 states, including Connecticut and New York, according to Education Week. The Los Angeles school district, the country’s second largest, will have enough vaccine doses by the end of next week to reopen its elementary school campuses, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“There is no time to waste,” said Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association, recommending a pilot program proposed last month by a coalition of labor organizations that would quickly vaccinate teachers in at least 20 high-need school districts.
Boston Teachers Union President Jessica Tang praised the 21 lawmakers for putting pressure on Baker, emphasizing that a full-time return to personal learning will require comprehensive health plans from state leaders.
“If they want this to happen, there needs to be a careful and detailed plan on how all educators and school staff will actually be vaccinated,” she said.
It is even more important that teachers who are already back to school be prioritized, she said. Preschoolers through third grade began returning to Boston public schools for face-to-face learning on Monday. Tang estimated that more than half of the union’s 7,500 members are already back in school buildings.
In the meantime, a petition is circulating online in an impetus for Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses to be distributed to teachers. As of Tuesday night, more than 5,300 people had signed up.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former head of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, said that vaccinating teachers is not a prerequisite for opening schools and that “there is growing data that suggests schools can with security reopens. “
Massachusetts has improved its national ranking in the distribution of vaccines in recent weeks and currently ranks first in the first doses administered per capita among states with a population of more than 5 million people.
Matt Stout of the Globe team contributed to this report.
Emma Platoff can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on twitter @emmaplatoff. Felicia Gans can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on twitter @FeliciaGans.