SF teachers jumped the vaccination line
There should be more outrage that teachers and staff at schools in Santa Fe received the vaccine on Jan. 22 because, not only did they jump the line, (but also) they showed not contrition, but a sense of entitlement.
Robin Chavez, principal at Santo Niño Regional Catholic School, conceded the vaccinations might not look good from a public relations standpoint, but also said she couldn’t understand the controversy because having teachers in the classroom allows medical professionals with children to do their job.
Both Chavez and Cindy Montoya, president of the state-chartered New Mexico School for the Arts, said getting teachers vaccinated could only help get the state back to a sense of normalcy by returning students to the classroom.
That’s not for them to say. The guidelines of the New Mexico Department of Health vaccine allocation plan were structured to protect people at increased risk for severe COVID-19-related illness. The eventual goal may be “normalcy,” but the present goal is to protect an 80-yearold woman with diabetes from dying from the coronavirus.
In a May 8 New York Times article, “No Return to the ‘Old Dispensation,’” Roger Cohen wrote, “The virus is a searchlight that lays everything bare. All the grotesque needed, to be revealed as such, was for time to stop.” The pandemic revealed systemic institutional failure, from the World Health Organization pandering to China to the muddled response of the Trump administration to the nursing home genocide of Andrew Cuomo. To Cohen, the grotesque that was revealed was the dominion of global elites over individuals, which has created a world of pervasive and fast-growing economic and racial inequality. The virus has brought far more death to poor people and communities of color, diminishing class mobility and falling life expectancy.
The virus has revealed something in Santa Fe, as well. That Chavez and Montoya are educators of the young shows the source of what almost defines Santa Fe: the sense of privilege.
JAMES KELLY ALBUQUERQUE