NYC Education Dept. staffers are 95% vaccinated with at least one dose as mandate takes effect
A hefty 95% of public school staffers got at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by the Monday deadline, bringing them in compliance with the city’s mandate — but the schoolhouse gates closed for another roughly 8,000 school workers without jabs.
The vaccination percentages are higher for teachers — 96% of whom received at least one jab — and principals, who are 99% vaccinated.
Mayor de Blasio called the vaccine rates “an amazing effort,” adding that 43,000 doses have been delivered to Department of Education employees since the mandate was announced Aug. 23. Eighteen-thousand doses have been given out since last Friday as the deadline approached and legal challenges to the vaccine requirement were defeated.
“That’s an incredible surge,” said schools chancellor Meisha Porter. “To those who have not yet gotten vaccinated, it’s never too late to get the life-saving vaccine.”
But school officials across the city were also coming to grips with the hole created by the roughly 8,000 staffers who had yet to comply with the vaccine mandate.
Some of the holdouts gathered in raucous rallies in Brooklyn and Manhattan on Monday.
Hundreds of anti-vaccine protesters assembled outside a DOE building on Court St. in Downtown Brooklyn holding signs that read “Resist Medical Tyranny” or “My Body My Choice.”
William Castro, an administrator who oversees support for English language learners in the Bronx, is still hoping the DOE will give him a religious exemption.
He declined to share the specific nature of his religious concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines, saying he’s part of a federal lawsuit challenging the DOE’s policy for handing out the religious exceptions. He called his own concerns “strong convictions.”
“There’s no way that I’m getting that vaccine,” he added. “I’m trusting in God that the outcome” will work out in his favor, Castro added.
Multiple legal challenges to the vaccine mandate have so far been struck down in both state and federal court.
Other vaccine mandate holdouts said they may still change their minds.
Lanette Murphy, a parent coordinator at a Manhattan elementary school, said she’s not against vaccines, but said she wants to wait to take the COVID-19 inoculation because she claims she has a high level of antibodies from a previous COVID infection.
“It is the most heartbreaking decision I’ve ever made in my life. I have no income, I’m a single parent,” she said of the choice to leave her post.
Murphy says she wants to talk to another doctor about her situation, but may relent and get her shot. DOE employees currently on unpaid leave can resume their positions if they show proof of a dose, according to agreements with the labor unions.
City officials said they had enough substitutes — with a pool of 9,000 vaccinated substitute teachers, and 5,000 vaccinated substitute paraprofessionals — to fill the shortages. The DOE also reassigned central office staffers to schools with shortages.
But one central staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said DOE bureaucrats without teaching licenses were asked to work as paraprofessionals in District 75 schools for students with complex disabilities.
The staffer said a colleague reported to one such school and wound up doing little more than “babysitting” because they had no training. Paraprofessionals don’t need teaching licenses but often perform sensitive work with vulnerable students.
The vaccination rate for paraprofessionals was roughly 92% as of Monday morning, lower than that of teachers, DOE officials said. Roughly 3,000 teachers and 2,000 paraprofessionals were unvaccinated in the most recently tally.
DC37, the union that represents roughly 20,000 cafeteria workers, school aides, and other staffers, said 93% of its Education Department members were vaccinated, up from just 68% at the beginning of September.
Health care workers across the state are required to get vaccinated, but de Blasio has so far not imposed a vaccine mandate on city agencies outside the DOE.
United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said Monday morning that while vaccination rates were high overall, there were some District 75 schools on the southern tip of Staten Island that might be facing more significant staffing needs.
Mulgrew — whose union was part of an unsuccessful legal challenge to the mandate — argued the requirement should’ve been implemented over the summer so that staffing issues could be addressed before students started school.
De Blasio countered that the 95% vaccination rate proves the mandate was effective, and that debating the timeline now amounts to “Monday morning quarterbacking.”
Some parents breathed a sigh of relief knowing that there was a guarantee that adults interacting with their kids at school had at least one dose of a vaccine.
Paula Ellis, a parent of Bronx students who spoke during de Blasio’s press conference Monday, said she kept her kids home in remote learning last year because of safety concerns. But the vaccine mandate reassured her “this year would be different,” she said.
