Vaccine blitz for teachers and staff
School personnel could get shots by spring break
Thousands of Marin teachers and other school staff could be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by spring break, if a new “vaccine super-pods” plan goes forward as expected.
“We’re hoping to have vaccine super-pods of 12-hour days, with 2,000 shots a day,” Mary Jane Burke, Marin superintendent of schools, said Friday.
Tentative dates for the mass vaccination events are March 6, 13, 27 and April 3 at the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael. The latter two events would be for the second doses of the vaccine.
“if this works out, we could have everyone done before spring break,” Burke said. County schools have a spring vacation set the week of April 5-9.
“We’ll be using all our school volunteers to help,” Burke said. “Somewhere between 200 and 400 people.”
Dr. Matt Willis, Marin public health officer, confirmed the “super-pod” plans and the mass event dates via text message on Friday.
He said more details will be unveiled at a webinar at 1 p.m. Monday with Burke. The webinar will be available at the Marin County Office of Education website at marinschools.org.
About 25% of frontline, high-risk Marin school teachers and staff have been vaccinated so far — including bus drivers, food service workers, custodians and special education teachers.
More than 1,200 employees received a first dose at a mass vaccination event on Jan. 17. The county halted the effort as supplies slowed, shifting priority to seniors due to the higher risk of death in those groups, county public health officials said.
While Marin is ahead of the rest of the state in opening schools, worries about education across the U.S. during the pandemic have shifted sharply since last summer, with a majority of people surveyed across the country now saying they are more concerned about the academic, emotional and economic harm of keeping classrooms closed than the risk of spreading the potentially deadly coronavirus.
The percentage of Americans who say the biggest consideration in reopening schools should be the possibility that students will fall behind academically without in-person instruction has jumped from 48% last July to 61% this month, according to a new Pew Research Center survey published this week.
“Americans are increasingly concerned about the effect of virtual learning on academic progress,” said Juliana Horowitz, author of the center’s report on the online survey of 10,121 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 16-21.
The survey found the percentage who say the top consideration should be the risk of teachers getting or spreading the virus fell from 60% last July to 48% this month, and those who cited the risk of students catching or transmitting it fell from 61% to 45%.
However, a majority of U.S. adults — 59% — say K-12 schools not currently open for in-person instruction shouldn’t reopen until all teachers who want the coronavirus vaccine have received it, while 40% say they should reopen as soon as possible, even if many teachers who want the vaccine haven’t received the shots.
The poll comes as the battle over reopening public schools intensifies, especially in California, which has been among the slowest states to return kids to classrooms.
In Marin, nearly 90% of Marin schools some form of in-person classroom learning underway, according to the county.
After almost a year of remote instruction during the pandemic, it was announced this week that Marin public high school and middle school students would return to at least part-time campus instruction starting next week as Marin re-enters the red tier 2 virus status.
The changes, affecting more than 12,000 students countywide, are the last major wave of school reopenings in Marin.