âOur community depends on us to educate these children in a safe environment and to not get them sick, and vice versa,â said Johnson, who is also vice-president for paraprofessionals at AFT Local 420 union.
But keeping teachers safe is not easy â or consistent. Across the US the availability of vaccines to teachers and other workers in American schools has become something of a lottery, with it being available in some areas, and not in many others even as public schools are being reopened. For many American teachers, access to the vaccine seems to depend less on what you do as a frontline educator and more on where you do it.