Sacramento County teachers are getting vaccinated. How long will it take? Will schools open?
Sacramento County began vaccinating teachers and child care providers last week. It’s a key step toward reopening school campuses, but health officials warned it will take weeks – or even months – to offer the vaccine to the roughly 25,000 school employees in the county.
Teachers are finding that appointments are limited and some are booking their first shot in mid-March. Appointments will be required, and vaccines are available on a first come, first served basis.
Delays may occur for a variety of reasons, including storms that hit the U.S. this week. But school officials are hopeful.
“I’m very optimistic,” said Sacramento County superintendent of schools Dave Gordon. “But none of us can control the appearance of these vaccines. That’s the big imponderable in all of this. We will hope and see how that works out. But educators are now a priority.”
School reopenings are not fully contingent on whether teachers are vaccinated. Some teachers unions have released reopening “frameworks” that also involve improved ventilation systems in schools and demands that community spread of COVID-19 has decreased. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that the state will set aside 10% of vaccine first doses for teachers and child care workers beginning March 1.
“The important point is that the state made (teacher vaccinations) a priority, and we need to execute on that priority,” Gordon said.
Elk Grove, Sac City, San Juan
The Elk Grove Unified School District has partnered with California Northstate University to vaccinate teachers. More than 1,300 Elk Grove Unified employees signed up for appointments last week. The university expects to vaccinate all 6,500 district employees in two to three weeks. Emily Lints, associate director of the Elk Grove Education Association, is also optimistic that the district and university can offer the first shots within that timeline.
“We want to support the Elk Grove school district, help get students back into the classroom and give parents the opportunity to return to work,” said Dr. Alvin Cheung, President and CEO of California Northstate University. “This is a contributing effort towards Elk Grove’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan and helping businesses be ready to resume full operations.”
The clinic is open to all school districts in Sacramento County, but the site is currently not allowing teachers to independently register.
Medical professionals, including some school district nurses, began vaccinating hundreds of Sacramento City Unified School District teachers on Friday in partnership with Dignity Health. The district expects to offer a vaccine to all employees within one month, starting with those working on-site, including workers in food and nutrition services. Several district teachers told The Sacramento Bee they still have not received their invitation to make an appointment.
“The distribution of the vaccine to Sac City Unified educators will speed our district’s Return Together plan and the return of students to in-person learning,” Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jorge Aguilar said in a statement. “After nearly a year of distance learning, we cannot wait to welcome all our students back to their school sites where we can better address their academic, social, and emotional learning needs.”
The district has set April 8 as a goal to return students in pre-kindergarten through third grade to classrooms on a hybrid schedule. Students in fourth through sixth grades would return a week later, and middle and high school students would go back May 6 if Sacramento County is in the red tier of coronavirus spread risk.
The district’s teachers union, the Sacramento City Teachers Association, said the availability of vaccines makes the district one step closer to reopening schools, but is just one part of their proposed reopening framework that also includes improving ventilation in schools and reopening when all ZIP codes served by the district are in the red tier for coronavirus spread risk “for at least two weeks,” a standard that might be several weeks away given that Sac City schools are in some of Sacramento’s hardest-hit neighborhoods.
The district recently purchased and then removed controversial air purifiers from classrooms and will begin testing the devices for how effectively they clean the air. As part of its reopening effort, the school district bought thousands of air cleaners, replacement filters and bulbs last year through a more than $6 million contract. The district is working on several measures to address ventilation, including reprogramming HVAC units to run continuously, as part of the recommended “layered mitigation steps.”
“Schools should be the safest places in our community,” said SCTA President David Fisher. “Vaccinations for teachers are a significant part of our five-point plan for safely reopening schools. But ventilation recommended by independent experts and other layered mitigation steps also need to be put in place too.”
More than 1,500 San Juan Unified district employees were expected to be vaccinated last weekend at Del Campo High School. The district partnered with Dignity Health and opened a community clinic for district employees and community members over the age of 65.
The district hopes to open two additional clinics and anticipates that all district employees will be vaccinated within the next few weeks.
Where can teachers make vaccine appointments?
People in education may get appointments at ongoing county-approved sites including Cal Expo, California State University, Sacramento, and small clinics such as MD Stat Urgent and Primary Care.
County health officials hope to soon identify two to three school sites, spread around the county, where they will have many in the educator group go for their vaccines. The sites would likely be one-day popups, then move to another location. Each pop-up can do about 1,000 to 1,200 shots.
When the county determines where the first set of sites will be, it will reach out to its contacts at school districts, private schools and others in education with a website link for each of them to send to their employees, allowing those employees to log on and set up an appointment at one of these sites.
“We have a list of contacts for schools,” said Sacramento County Public Health official Dr. Olivia Kasirye. “Once we get a web link for a clinic, our staff will send that to our contacts (in education) and they will send it out to their members. We don’t make it public. Others will jump on those appointments.”
Educators who work outside Sacramento County are expected to get vaccinated in the county they work in, according to local health officials.
Kasirye warns teachers that the county also is vaccinating people age 65 and up, which is a very large group, and the weekly dosage shipments to the county are limited.
“It will take awhile (to vaccinate educators),” she said. “We are asking people to be patient. We have so many who want the vaccine and not enough vaccine to meet the demand.”
This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM.