Thousands of teachers in New York City have canceled their COVID-19 vaccine appointments thanks to snafus delivery and scheduling – a bureaucratic mess that could only further delay school reopening, union leader Michael Mulgrew told The Post Tuesday.
The situation has made it virtually impossible to keep track of who gets the photo, Mulgrew said.
“I want schools to open in September. But there is still a lot to be done before we can make a call, ”said the Union Big.
David Bloomfield, a professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center, agreed, warning, “As long as we don’t have widespread vaccinations, it will be difficult to deploy staff.”
As for the Municipal Department of Education and the Blasio’s administration, both still couldn’t say on Tuesday how many Big Apple educators got the shot.
There are approximately 75,000 teachers assigned to public school classrooms in the city. Current personal teachers were given priority in taking the photos after the city reopened several pre-K to fifth grade schools for classroom learning earlier this month.
Mulgrew told The Post that about 20,000 city teachers in class have booked an appointment through the union and 10,000 have been linked to providers so far.
Of these, about 5,000 have administered the vaccine.
But teachers also look up the vaccination independently, either through city services or channels outside the five city districts.
Mulgrew said appointments made by the city have been massively canceled due to vaccine shortages and scheduling issues.
“We’ve had a few thousand people contact us and say their appointment has been canceled,” he said.
Several teachers confirmed to The Post this week that their vaccination dates for the city have been cut and that they have not been able to get new ones.
Mulgrew said on Tuesday City Hall promised to report how many teachers had been vaccinated through agencies outside the union, but have yet to provide the data.
Complicating matters, a union source said, is the fact that some teachers living out of town may be immunized without direct notice from local authorities.
“The city really needs to better coordinate the program,” Mulgrew said. “We’re in a place where we’ll be out of this in six to nine months because we’ve developed immunity to herds, or we’ll be on this for another one to two years.”
Mulgrew said the union has tried to ensure doses are available before members are matched with providers.
That approach has enabled the organization to avoid cancellations, he said.
“The federal government needs to get us more vaccines,” he said. That is not a debate. But you should not have all these arrangements made and then cancel them because you are overbooking. “
City officials complained on Tuesday that they are struggling with unpredictable supplies of the shot.
“There is a national vaccine shortage,” said Avery Cohen, City Hall representative.
“Like many cities in America, we are forced to reschedule thousands of appointments due to delivery problems. With more than 650,000 doses administered to date, we’ve built the infrastructure to shoot into the arms of millions of New Yorkers. We just need the doses to get it done. “
Mulgrew stressed that there is no vaccination rate for magical teachers that will trigger the reopening of the country’s largest school system.
He said COVID-19 citywide indicators – and vaccination rates – will determine when classrooms greet children full-time again.