Teachers, staff push back on Missouri not moving teachers up in vaccine priority
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (KMOV) Speaking Thursday from the Missouri State Capitol, top health official Dr. Randall Williams said the government is not considering moving teachers up in the priority for vaccine rollout, given how many elderly and vulnerable residents remain un-vaccinated.
“Our North Star is our most vulnerable,” Williams said, adding that he looks closely at senior citizen vaccination rates each morning. “This morning, for [age] 85 and over it was 35 percent. For 75 and over it was 24 percent, and for 65 it was 25 percent.”
28 states, including neighboring Illinois, have made teachers eligible for the vaccine. In Missouri, teachers are not yet eligible as a profession, but some may qualify based on age or health conditions. Williams said he understands the concern for educators, but points to what the state government sees as an obligation to help those most at-risk
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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.
Carron Johnson, an instructional care aide in St Louis, Missouri, knows exactly how important her job is in an American school. She is currently working in a hybrid model of remote and in-person learning along with other teachers in the St Louis public schools district despite ongoing fears posed by the coronavirus pandemic that has shuttered many schools across the US and thrown the entire education system into chaos. “Our community depends on.