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.