A step for schools
As teacher vaccinations ramp up, a full return is appearing in sight for fall
Nearly one year after Massachusetts schools closed their doors to students and teachers as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the state, Boston Public Schools staff visited a vaccination clinic to get their shots, prompting administrators to say a full return to school is finally in sight.
“We keep saying better days are ahead and we do really see the light at the end of the tunnel here,” Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said after greeting teachers at the Boston Centers for Youth and Families Gallivan Community Center in Mattapan on Sunday.
The site will inoculate 2,000 BPS teachers and staff with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine over the next two weeks as the district ramps up in-person learning. K-3 students are already back in class and fourth- through eighth-graders return parttime today.
The relief among teachers, staffers and bus drivers — many of whom have been working at least part-time with students throughout the pandemic — was palpable as they exited the clinic on Sunday.
Mattahunt Elementary School special education teacher Molly Norton called the experience “so easy and awesome.”
Bus driver John Sullivan of Hyde Park said he “felt a sense of relief in his core” after watching four co-workers die of the virus this past year.
High school social worker Patricia Valdez who works to connect needy families with rent relief and food assistance said, “I’ll feel a little more comfortable going into the building to provide for them.”
Gov. Charlie Baker on March 15, 2020, issued an executive order shuttering all schools for three weeks effective March 17. Students and teachers would ride out the remainder of the turbulent school year on screens. Remote learning would remain the norm last fall and as of this March, 20% of Massachusetts public schools are taught entirely online. Nearly all the rest continue with hybrid learning models where students split time between in-person and remote learning.
Boston last month became one of the first urban districts to forge ahead with a phased plan to bring students back to class under the hybrid model. Cassellius said a return to traditional schooling “is starting to feel more real” with students in the classrooms. High school students return on March 29.
But Gov Charlie Baker’s administration plans to force statewide a return to full in-person learning five days a week starting next month. The move has put teachers and school districts at odds with the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Many districts — including Boston — are may apply for waivers.
Cassellius said Boston is “planning for in-person summer school this year and striving for a full in-person fall return.”
But even as vaccinations appeared to take off without a hitch on Sunday, Boston Teachers Union President Jessica Tang said once all 2,000 shots are doled out over the next two weeks, “only a quarter of our whole staff in BPS will be vaccinated.”
Baker’s administration has committed about 25,000 appointments to the more than 400,000 teachers and staffers at four dedicated days at the state’s mass vaccination sites. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend all teachers be vaccinated prior to reopening schools
Tang said the spat between teachers unions and Baker took an “adversarial turn” last week when a spokesman for the governor characterized the union’s push to get more shots for teachers as trying to take shots “away from the sickest, oldest and most vulnerable.” “We wish that the relationship we’ve been able to have with the district and city on vaccinations would be able to be replicated at the state level too,” Tang said.