Kansas City area teachers prepare for COVID vaccines as students return to classrooms
With school nurses already receiving coronavirus vaccines, Kansas City area districts are gearing up for their teachers to be next in line.
Districts are working with local health departments to develop distribution plans as health officials learn through online surveys how many employees want to roll up their sleeves and get immunized.
“While we do not know yet when vaccines will be available for educators, we stand ready to act as soon as the vaccine doses arrive,” said Maggie Kolb, spokeswoman for Olathe schools.
As more teachers get vaccinated, school officials across the metro have said they’ll be willing to bring more students back to classrooms full time, or in some cases, open classrooms for the first time this school year.
Both Kansas and Missouri are busy getting vaccines to the first phase of recipients — front-line health care workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
Kansas health officials said they expect their next phase — people 65 and over and essential workers, like teachers — should start getting vaccinated in early February.
Missouri health officials said Thursday that anyone 65 and older and those with certain health conditions will be eligible for the vaccine on Monday, though supplies are scarce. Officials did not have a timeline for the next group, which includes teachers. But Kansas City Public Schools officials say they were told to expect vaccines for their staff in late January and in February.
Paula Amaonye, a nurse at the African Centered College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, received the first of two doses of the vaccine Thursday morning at Truman Medical Center at Lakewood.
“I’m 66 years old. I have been a nurse for 40 years,” Amaonye said. “I remember back in the 1960s as a child lining up at school to get my polio shot. I am not nervous. I am going to trust the science. I want to get back to school. At school I have students coming in my office every day and they are sick. I want to protect my students. I want to protect myself.”
She said some of her school colleagues are less eager to get the vaccine — it’s voluntary — “but they say they will get it, but they want to wait to see if there are any side effects from it down the road.”
North Kansas City school officials this week sent a form to all staff to gauge the amount of vaccine needed.
“At this point, the response has been overwhelmingly supportive of receiving the vaccine,” said Susan Hiland, district spokeswoman. “We are working through logistics and planning how to ensure a safe and effective distribution process for all who elect to participate.”
KCPS is working with Truman Medical Center to distribute Pfizer vaccines at select KCPS sites, including Manual Career and Technology Center and Paseo High School.
Last week, the Kansas City, Kansas, district informed teachers and staff that the Wyandotte County Health Department was looking into how many people want the vaccine. In all, 2,500 said yes, said Elizabeth Morris, health coordinator for the district.
She said school nurses received their first of the two-dose Moderna vaccination Dec. 30 at the county’s testing and vaccine center at a former Kmart.
District physical therapists, speech pathologists and social workers, who qualify in that first phase, are getting their first shots this week. Teachers are next.
Both KCK and KCPS districts have had all students learning online remotely since the school year began. KCK plans to start reopening school buildings in April.
At a meeting Wednesday night, KCPS Superintendent Mark Bedell told board members that once the window for teachers and staff to receive vaccines has closed, “we will begin work to bring our students back” to some in-person classes. “My goal is March,” Bedell said.
“We need to get our students back to in-person learning, and we know that the fastest and safest way to do that is through vaccinations. I am personally ready to get vaccinated as soon as possible.”
Many suburban districts sent students to online-only learning after Thanksgiving, and they are starting to allow them to return to classrooms, some full time, some only part of the time.
“Having the vaccine available to staff gets us one step closer to having all students back to school in-person,” said Kaci Brutto, spokeswoman for Blue Valley schools.
Vaccines won’t mean districts will loosen safety protocols.
“Mask mandates will remain in place, people still have to social distance, wash hands, follow all the protocols,” Morris of KCK said. “People who become ill still have to isolate, people who are exposed still have to quarantine. One thing we have learned about the vaccine is that it protects the person who has received it from become ill, but that does not mean they cannot be a carrier or transmit the virus. Our behavior cannot change just because people get the vaccine.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2021 at 1:33 PM.
