Prioritize school staff for vaccines
As COVID-19 cases increase throughout the community and schools, teachers continue educating in person — exposing themselves and risking their health.
These same teachers that juggle both in-person students and virtual students while creating safe spaces are in danger of becoming infected from the very students they are attempting to protect.
Children are more likely to be asymptomatic, increasing the chances of transmitting COVID-19 through a larger group like a classroom. By the time the teacher and students are warned about a case in their classroom — if there is any warning at all — the virus has likely been spread.
Vaccinating teachers is the first step we can take to show our teachers we value and respect their work. We entrust them with our children — with their development and growth. A courtesy is to protect them from an invisible but mighty danger that our children could unwittingly carry.
Though children are less likely to develop severe illness, adults — especially those considered at highrisk — are not as resilient. Do we sacrifice lives that do not have the option to work and study remotely? School districts have stated that reverting to completely virtual classes is not an option. We owe it to our teachers — who often do not receive the respect they deserve — to make them among the first to get a vaccine, especially if we insist on leaving them working along the front-lines.
Texas Health and Human Services has confirmed that phase 1A will be provided to health care workers, including school nurses. Health care workers should be the first on this list, obviously, but the list should expand to include school faculty and staff who have no other choice than to work in environments neither as sterile nor as well-ventilated as those of health care staff.
We have already seen how teachers needing to quarantine has led to a shortage of substitutes. Other instructors have contemplated resigning due to being high-risk.
A shortage of teachers leads to educational delays for our children. Our children—and our teachers and staff — have already experienced a difficult year of delays and academic struggles. Providing a vaccine might reduce the number of absences and increase protective measures of our educators.
According to the Texas Education Agency, almost 29,000 positive staff cases have been reported across the state. That is almost 4 percent of all staff, or 2 percent of all cumulative Texas cases. Apart from health care workers, we are not seeing such numbers in any other industry.
We are asking people to stay home to flatten the curve, but require teachers to expose themselves daily. In addition, the average instructor is 42.3 years old, and it is known that the severity of the illness increases with age.
To flatten the curve, stop the spread and keep our children safe, moving teachers to the front of the line would make the most sense. Vaccinating teachers is a key to safely reopening schools and returning to some sense of normalcy.