Letetsia A. Fox, Chapter President Los Angeles 500 of the California School Employees Association receives her first COVID-19 Moderna vaccination shot from registered nurse Sosse Bedrossian, director of nursing services for LAUSD.
Al Seib | Los Angeles Times | Getty images
President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged states to prioritize the vaccination of teachers and school staff against Covid-19, with the goal of delivering at least one shot to every educator and staff member nationwide by the end of March.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have previously urged states to prioritize teacher vaccination, but some public health specialists criticized the agency for not making vaccination a prerequisite for K-12 schools to reopen.
“Let me be clear, we can reopen schools if the right steps are taken even before employees have been vaccinated,” Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “But time and again we have heard from educators and parents who are concerned about it.”
To help accelerate the safe reopening of schools, Biden said, “ let’s treat personal learning as the essential service it is and that means getting essential workers to provide that service, educators, school staff, childcare workers, getting them vaccinated . . ”
“My challenge to all states, territories and the District of Columbia is this: We want every educator, school staff and child caregiver to get at least one injection by the end of March,” he added.
Biden said he will use the federal pharmacy partnership set up with pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens to expand access to Covid-19 vaccines to make the injections available to pre-K-12 teachers and school staff. That would give those workers the opportunity to get the vaccine, even in states where they don’t meet local eligibility requirements.
His statement is the strongest call to date and the most ambitious timeline presented by the federal government for states to prioritize educators and school staff, even though it has no mandate to do so. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, hailed the president’s comments as a concrete step toward reopening schools for personal learning.
“What a tremendous relief to have a president meeting this moment of crisis,” Weingarten said in a statement. “Vaccinations are a key ingredient in safely reopening schools, and this is the administration taking the steps to ramp up vaccinations for educators, which is great news for anyone looking to learn in school.”
Because doses of the Covid-19 vaccines are scarce, states are rationing them to prioritized groups, usually front-line workers, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems. While the CDC makes recommendations about which groups should get the vaccine first, states ultimately make their own decisions.
The CDC has recommended that teachers be vaccinated in the phase 1b group, which includes everyone 75 and older, as well as “first-line essential workers.” But some states have excluded teachers and school personnel from their definition of essential frontline workers.
Although the country’s highest health authority recommends states to prioritize teacher vaccination, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that teachers who are not vaccinated should not be a barrier to reopening schools. She has said that if schools follow the public health measures outlined by the CDC, teachers and staff can safely return to personal learning.
However, based on the parameters set by the CDC, about 90% of schools in the country are in counties with significant levels of dispersion where the CDC says it is not safe for schools to fully reopen for personal learning.