Darien schools reopen after Monday closure
DARIEN — Darien High School, Middlesex Middle School and Royle Elementary School reopend Tuesday after being forced to close Monday due to staff outages.
Schools Superintendent Alan Addley said the staff absences were “nearly exclusively attributable to feeling ill after the second vaccination.”
Darien school staff received their second Moderna vaccine on Saturday in a town clinic.
In an email to parents Sunday night, Addley said Darien High School and Middlesex Middle School will each be closed on Monday. In an update, officials said Royle Elementary School is also closed.
“Given the number secondary school staff illnesses and the district’s inability to cover classes and intervention services, the high school and middle school will be closed (Monday) with no remote learning or sporting events,” Addley wrote.
The day off will be treated as a traditional “snow day,” and will be made up at the end of the academic year. Some social media comments in reaction to the school closures criticized the teachers and accused the Darien teachers’ union of coordinating the response.
Darien teachers’ union president
Joslyn Delancey called the criticism “disheartening” on Monday. Delancey is a fifth grade teacher at Tokeneke School in Darien.
“I'm at school today after a pretty miserable reaction to the vaccine over the weekend. Some comments indicate that the union organized teachers calling out,” she said.
“The union president is at work and teaching today and encouraged teachers to rally if they could and come in to teach. The only reason a teacher would have called out is because s/he was still feeling the severe reactions to the vaccine,” Delancey said.
Delancey pointed out that other districts across the state have had to do the same thing in terms of going remote or canceling the day because the reaction was worse than planned for.
“Teachers got vaccinated to make sure that schools were safer. Darien teachers are committed to doing the very best for their students and have ensured that we have had the most in-person teaching as possible,” she said.
Addley called the criticisms “unfortunate and disappointing.”
A spokesman for the state Department of Education said Monday steps are being taken to help avoid the sudden school closures that have occurred due to large numbers of teachers calling out sick with side effects from the COVID vaccine.
Peter Yazbak, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said school districts are trying to avoid these disruptions through creative scheduling, and health experts maintain that these side effects should not deter anyone from getting the vaccine.
“I can confirm that a few districts have closed individual schools as a result of (side effects from the vaccine),” Yazbak said. “However, our department has also issued guidance for districts to communicate frequently with school staff, students and families the importance of staying out of school when they feel sick, when they are awaiting a test result, or when they are in an isolation or quarantine period.”
Darien’s spring break begins April 12. Addley said the district is discussing taking any travel that week combined with CDC guidelines and vaccination guidelines into consideration with state and local health officials.