White House reiterates stance on teacher vaccinations

WASHINGTON—The White House on Sunday reiterated that teachers do not need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus before schools can reopen, a stance that Biden administration officials say is in line with scientific guidelines but that puts them at odds with some teachers unions that have insisted members will not return to the classroom until they receive a vaccine.

Whether teachers must be vaccinated before in-person lessons resume has become another inflection point in heated debates about when and how schools should reopen.

White House officials had for weeks given conflicting answers about whether teachers needed to be vaccinated before schools are reopened. On Sunday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki echoed guidelines released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which state that vaccinating teachers is not a prerequisite for reopening schools, though it advised that teachers should have priority access to coronavirus vaccines.

“The CDC is saying in order to be safe, there are a number of steps that can be taken. Vaccinating teachers is one of them,” Psaki said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” before listing an array of other measures, including smaller class sizes, separating children on school buses, providing personal protective equipment to schools and making testing facilities more available.

“Our secretary of education will work with school districts to implement that,” Psaki continued. “So [teachers] should be prioritized. But our science experts are saying it’s not a prerequisite, and that’s the guidelines that we follow.”

President Joe Biden said when he took office last month that he wanted the majority of American schools reopened within the first 100 days of his term — or by late April — a goal he has since clarified to mean most students in kindergarten through eighth grade returning to in-person learning five days a week.

When asked Sunday whether that goal was still realistic, Psaki said that it remained the White House’s “objective,” but that schools needed more money to be able to make the necessary improvements and hire more people to reopen safely. She, like Biden, once again called on Congress to pass his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which includes $130 billion for school facilities.

“Many schools across the country don’t have the resources to be able to invest in improving facilities and hiring more bus drivers and hiring more temporary teachers so we can have smaller class sizes,” Psaki said. “Every school in the country does not have that funding and does not have the resources. And we need to, from the federal government, help address that.”