What Stanislaus County educators are saying about vaccinations, returning to school
As coronavirus cases decline after a severe holiday surge, momentum to reopen schools spurred by President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom raises a thorny question about vaccinating teachers and school employees before students in higher grade levels return to class.
Unless they’re working beyond retirement age, teachers are generally not eligible for COVID-19 vaccine in Stanislaus County. The state could loosen eligibility to include school employees in a week or so, however.
Offering the vaccine to teachers doing in-person learning in elementary grades and those teaching remotely for junior high and high schoolers, who might return to campuses before long, will depend on vaccine availability.
As of yet, no one has signaled it’s safe to open additional elementary school classes, or junior highs and high schools in Stanislaus County. Public health and political leaders have suggested schools could reopen safely with a countywide case rate of 25 per 100,000 residents — the current rate is almost twice that.
Stanislaus County formally remains under the state’s purple tier category that closes middle schools and high schools until daily cases are below 7 per 100,000.
The county Health Services Agency has been getting about 5,000 doses per week for inoculating eligible residents for COVID-19 and doesn’t have nearly enough for school employees who want the shots, though supply is expected to increase.
Newsom said at a news conference Wednesday that schools could open safely without all teachers being vaccinated, echoing the opinion of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Unions like the California Teachers Association have urged the governor to wait for lower transmission rates and improve the vaccine rollout including school-based sites where school staff and eligible household members can be vaccinated.
Krystal Booth-Gill, a sixth-grade science and math teacher at Savage Middle School in Modesto, said older people should be first for vaccinations and then school employees, so more kids can come back to school.
“I don’t think teachers should be forced to come back if they have underlying health conditions and people at home that do and they can provide documentation of that,” Booth-Gill said. The teacher said her husband, a custodian who cleans elementary school classrooms, is overweight and doesn’t have the best lung capacity.
“I would come back if I had the choice, reluctantly,” Booth-Gill said.
Local unions representing teachers have different positions on whether vaccinations are a precondition of opening more schools.
Modesto Teachers Association weighs in
Modesto Teachers Association said it has worked collaboratively with Modesto City Schools on reopening for grades 7 to 12 in the safest manner possible. Schools were closed across Modesto after the pandemic was declared last March, but Modesto City Schools reopened with in-person learning in grades K-6 in November in classes designed with safety measures.
“We are hopeful that all (teachers and school employees) are able to be vaccinated on a voluntary basis, but with half of our bargaining unit already teaching in-person, it is not a prerequisite to our returning to (classes),” MTA President Doug Burton said in a statement. “As educators, we look forward to the day that we can safely have all of our students back in in-person learning, as we know this is where they learn best.”
Mary Crawford, president of the Patterson Teachers Association, said staff currently teaching students in the classroom should be vaccinated as soon as possible.
“We also believe that we should not bring back (high school) classes until the teachers are vaccinated because of the close environment as well as the large class sizes and the switching of the students each period,” Crawford said.
Stanislaus County leaders like Supervisor Terry Withrow have been big proponents of getting more students and other grade levels back on campuses for in-person instruction.
County public health was working with school districts to create pods for vaccinating school employees but that effort has stalled.
Eric Fredrickson, superintendent of Sylvan Union School District, said Sylvan worked with county public health to form a dispensing point, or “pod”, along with Stanislaus Union, Salida and Hart-Ransom districts, so employees could get shots from qualified vaccinators at a designated campus.
It was put on hold due to a shortage of vaccine about the time the state gave priority to people 65 and older in January, Fredrickson said.
Modesto City Schools has also worked with the county on a vaccine pod for employees. MCS spokeswoman Krista Noonan said due to fluctuations in the vaccine supply, the district is awaiting confirmation from county public health on the timing of vaccinations for employees.
“They are estimating the first round of vaccines would be available for MCS staff sometime near the end of February, but we’ve also informed staff that the timing can shift depending on vaccine availability,” Noonan said in an email.
Noonan said the district is working on an online system for staff to register their interest in vaccination and schedule a date and time. The district is still working on the logistics.
Kamlesh Kaur, a spokesperson for the county Health Services Agency, said Thursday the county is still in the planning stages for vaccine hubs serving large and small school districts, but she couldn’t share more details. Modesto City Schools has 3,200 employees and there are more than 20 other school districts in the county.
Fredrickson said county health officials asked Sylvan Union for a preliminary survey on how many employees were interested in coronavirus vaccine. He said employees were split about 50-50, with some wanting to see if there are reactions to the shots.
Sylvan Union opened transitional kindergarten to third grade classes for in-person learning in the fall after 60 percent of parents chose the option. The district was next going to open classrooms for 4th and 5th graders, but with the severe coronavirus surge around the holidays, public health officials advised postponing that until community transmission dropped to 25 cases per 100,000, Fredrickson said.
Under the current state rules, Sylvan has to wait until the county is promoted to the state’s less restrictive “red tier” before reopening its three middle schools for students.
“We are working, if we have the opportunity, to get more kids back in school, but we will have another option for parents who choose not to,” the superintendent said.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky cited evidence Wednesday that schools can safely reopen without vaccinations for teachers.
Biden has pushed for reopening most K-8 schools by April while giving priority to teacher vaccinations and adequate personal protective equipment for school staff.
What the research found
In a Jan. 26 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, CDC researchers wrote that COVID-19 cases have been reported in schools, but available evidence shows that schools following the safety protocols, such as masks, safe distancing and thorough cleaning, have not been a source of major transmission.
The article referred to a fall 2020 study of almost a dozen school districts in North Carolina, where only 32 cases were connected with attendance in schools with combined enrollment of 90,000 students. The study said 773 of confirmed infections were acquired in the community, not at school. No cases of staff contracting the illness from students were reported, the article said.
A data analysis of 4,876 students and 654 employees in K-12 schools in rural Wisconsin concluded that COVID-19 illness was lower in schools than in the community. Over a three-month period in fall 2020, there were 191 cases of COVID-19 in school employees and students, with seven cases coming from transmission in the Wisconsin schools, the JAMA article said.
The researchers wrote that closing schools can adversely affect students, their progress with learning, mental health and access to services. They cautioned that COVID spreading in classrooms can boost transmission in the community.
The same article said sizable outbreaks have occurred in schools where safety protocols like masking and safe distancing were neglected. In Israel, a large high school outbreak in May 2020 began with two students attending classes with mild symptoms, leading to infection of 153 students and 25 staff members.
Public health investigators pinned the blame on crowded classrooms, poor distancing and face mask exemptions. A contributing factor to spreading the virus was constant air-conditioning use in school buildings during a heat wave.
The JAMA article concluded that, while outbreaks often occur in congregate living centers and crowded workplaces, the “preponderance of evidence” from the fall semester shows they have not occurred in safely run schools.
Stanislaus County released some data on coronavirus infections reported by schools engaged in in-person instruction. Schools reported 568 confirmed cases that had a contact with someone at school.
Kaur said slightly more than 1 percent of the confirmed cases were contracted at school, while almost 99 percent of cases were connected to an infected person in their household or the community.
According to a dashboard on COVID-19 cases, Modesto City Schools has 7,250 students and staff in in-person learning programs at elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. Since Nov. 12, the district has recorded 164 cases in staff members and 24 infections in students.
Supervisor says teachers should have high priority
Supervisor Withrow said Friday he would like for students — especially vulnerable students who’ve done poorly with distance learning — to return to class now before falling further behind in their education. If vaccinations will get teachers back in classrooms, he added, they should be moved to top priority.
“We had a board report last week that the infection rate is 1.3 percent for the teachers (doing in-person learning),” Withrow said. He expressed concern that supply shortages will delay vaccinations for school employees and push reopening into the next school year.
Jamey Olney, a teacher for Glick Middle School, strongly favors an immediate return to in-person learning. Olney teaches English learners, immigrant students, and disadvantaged kids who have difficulties at home.
“My students fight a silent battle against inequity every day,” Olney wrote in an email. “Distance learning has made this battle much harder. ... Barriers to learning continue to be language, chaotic home environments, responsibility for caring for siblings and spotty wifi. Often, several students share one hot spot.”
With the closure of schools, it’s common for students in financially distressed families to watch younger siblings, while their parents work multiple jobs trying to pay the bills, she wrote.
Olney told of one determined student who lives in a trailer with 10 other people. He and his brother take turns sitting on the curb outside for Zoom classes, so the other sibling can use the dining room table.
Other students were learning to speak English and write essays before the school closures last March, but have regressed with distance learning and are failing, Olney wrote.
Ingrid Mello, who teaches fifth Grade at Marshall Elementary School in Modesto, said vaccinations are important to getting teachers back into classrooms with students.
“We want (students) in the class not just because of what we can do with them one-on-one, but it lessens the distractions that they have at home,” Mello said. “Once we get the vaccine, even though (immunity is) not completely guaranteed — but it’s a pretty high percentage — then we would definitely feel more comfortable with more students in the classroom, and the parents, especially would feel more comfortable.”
To simplify eligibility for vaccine in California, the state said in a news release Jan. 26 it would implement changes to make health workers, people 65 and older, and employees in education, child care, emergency services and food and agriculture eligible for vaccine appointments. The changes could take effect in mid-February.
People in other sectors will become eligible based on age, the news release said.
Debi Glover, a recently retired Modesto teacher, said she would like to work in a substitute role, but she doesn’t feel safe yet. “I would be interested in subbing but not until I have a vaccination. As far as vaccination orders, I do feel at-risk age groups should be first,” she said.
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
