Kansas teachers are getting COVID vaccines now. In Missouri, they might wait months
Kansas City area school districts are ready for thousands of teachers and staff to get a COVID-19 vaccine. They’ve coordinated with local hospitals, identified who wants it and secured locations to administer it.
But districts on the Missouri side have a problem: No one knows when any of that can happen.
While teachers in Kansas and about half the other states are already celebrating their shots in the arm, Missouri educators are frustrated that state officials have yet to open up vaccine eligibility for teachers, a step educators say is critical to getting all children back in school full time.
“It is hard for me to imagine that every state that touches us, with the exception of Oklahoma, is at a point where they are vaccinating teachers, and yet we can’t figure out how to get that done,” said Todd Fuller, spokesman for the 50,000-member Missouri State Teachers Association.
“I can’t figure out if it is a priority thing or if our system is just broken.”
Kenny Southwick, whose Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City represents 32 districts on the Missouri side, wrote to Gov. Mike Parson to express his frustration that Missouri lags behind Kansas getting shots to teachers and staff.
“We in Kansas City are still waiting for ours,” Southwick wrote. “We were originally told that our teachers would be among the first to be vaccinated, and to expect the first round of vaccinations to happen mid-February, so we were all looking for a spring reopening.
“We now hear it may be the middle of April before our staff will receive the first round of vaccines. This will put our Missouri metro districts at a huge disadvantage to our Kansas metro districts.”
The state teachers association also sent a letter asking the governor and state health officials to prioritize educators.
“We got a form letter back saying thank you for your concerns,” Fuller said. “It’s frustrating.”
Comparing Kansas and Missouri
With the vaccine supply severely limited, each state is prioritizing who is eligible first. Both Missouri and Kansas started in December with front-line health care workers and then residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
In January, Kansas opened up its large second phase, which includes seniors 65 and older and “high-contact critical workers” — including schoolteachers and staff.
Missouri also began offering vaccines to seniors, as well as to emergency responders and residents with certain health conditions. But state officials said this past week they don’t know when they will open the next tier, which will include workers in “essential functions,” such as kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers.
And there’s no cutting in line allowed. Local officials don’t have the authority to move teachers ahead of others, state health officials say.
“It’s a federal program administered through a state-approved plan,” said Dr. Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. “So you’re not allowed to vaccinate people who aren’t tiered by the state. They have to go by state guidelines.”
Williams said he personally checks out reports of people being vaccinated out of turn.
State officials have no timeline when the tier of essential workers will be eligible for shots, or, once officials make that move, if teachers could get priority.
“We do anticipate having some clarity for everyone to understand exactly what that looks like to ensure that we continue to move as one state, with one plan and one process, across all the different tiers,” Adam Crumbliss, director of the state’s Division of Community and Public Health, said at a media briefing last week.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that while teachers should get priority for vaccines, schools can still reopen regardless, as long as they enforce safety precautions such as masks, social distancing and frequent hand washing.
But districts have struggled to staff classrooms lately as teachers must stay home and quarantine after being exposed to the virus — in school or the community. And teachers still fear for their safety.
“I’m not asking that we push anyone away,” Southwick said of vaccine efforts. “If we get vaccine here, we want to see great consideration given to educators.”
Southwick said that if teachers got higher priority, many schools could be back to normal by spring.
After the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, most area school districts began phasing students back into classrooms, starting with the youngest. But both Kansas City Public Schools and the Kansas City, Kansas, school district have not allowed students in classrooms all year, with the exception of some child care centers and special-needs students.
KCPS has held off because “our positivity rates in the Kansas City school boundaries have been astronomically high,” said Kelly Wachel, district spokeswoman. “We are a large urban school district with demographics that are very different from our surrounding suburban districts. We have to consider that we have large numbers of students living in multi-generational homes, students who are homeless.”
Across the metro, educators and students agree that in-person classes are more effective than online. Last week, KCPS decided that with or without teacher vaccines, schools will phase students back into classrooms, beginning with elementary grades March 15.
“We will be using a hybrid and tiered approach,” Wachel said. Details will be announced at the Feb. 24 school board meeting.
Meanwhile, KCK teachers have been getting vaccinated. (Update: The district still plans to wait to reopen schools until April 5.)
Fuller said that the Missouri teachers association gets several calls every day from members who “don’t understand why we are pushing the idea of in person learning when we are not doing what we are supposed to do to make them feel safe in the schools.”
Planning for a distant future
While district leaders’ hands are tied when it comes to hurrying vaccines for their staff, they are working to coordinate efforts to get shots in arms as fast as possible as soon as health officials give them a green light.
This past week, Park Hill Superintendent Jeannette Cowherd, in a video to district staff, said she had good news: Working with North Kansas City Hospital, the district had set up a space where all 2,000 staff and teachers who want vaccines, about 82.4 % of all employees, could get them. She said school nurses were ready to help administer shots, and a schedule had been set to free up employees to receive each of the two doses required.
“Right now we are just waiting for the governor to approve our tier,” Cowherd said.
Wachel said KCPS has worked with officials from Truman Medical Centers and Children’s Mercy to identify several district buildings that will work as vaccine sites. It will take four to five days for the 70% of KCPS’ staff who want the vaccine to get a shot.
The bottom line, Wachel said, is “we all are advocating, we are pushing, trying to make the education arena a priority but it is not up to us. We have to wait our turn.”
North Kansas City school district is working with Truman to determine the best school building locations to set up teacher vaccine centers.
“We’ve identified two possible locations amongst our 35 at which the vaccine will be distributed,” district spokeswoman Susan Hiland said in an email to The Star. “Sites were toured by TMC staff members to ensure accessibility, adequate parking, plenty of room for the 15 minute monitoring period” — the time after the shot is given to check for side effects.
Hiland said 79% of teachers confirmed in a recent survey that they want the vaccine. The district wants to get it done quickly.
“We may need to shift to a virtual learning day for K-5 students to allow staff members the opportunity to receive the vaccine,” Hiland said. “Vaccinations for staff at secondary schools will likely occur on Wednesday when we don’t have students physically attending school.”
Sixteen of Kansas City’s 20 charter schools are working as a group to find a large enough location — a school gym or some other city facility — where their nearly 2,000 staff members and teachers can receive shots in one place over one or two days.
Leslie Kohlmeyer, director of Show Me KC Schools’ SchoolAppKC, a school enrollment platform, is working with Truman Medical Centers to coordinate the effort for some charters. Doug Thaman, executive director of Missouri Charter Public School Association, is working with Children’s Mercy.
“As far as I am concerned, teachers are front-line workers and they need to get their vaccines,” said Kohlmeyer, who also has three children in charter and KCPS schools.
Of course, some teachers, bus drivers, cooks, school secretaries and administrators have qualified for vaccine because they are over 65 or have some underlying condition.
Getting teachers vaccinated, she said, is even more crucial for urban districts and many of the charters that have older buildings with poor ventilation and less space to spread out students. Under those circumstances, she said, those schools are less able to get students and teachers back in buildings during the pandemic.
“What we are looking at is a huge equity issue here and Black and brown children are hurting.”
Thaman said he too has talked with state officials about the problem.
“The urgency here is that we really want to have kids back in school,” Thaman said. “We know the Centers for Disease Control has said that adults can return to an in-school teaching position without a vaccine, but we want to have school back when we can do it safely for everyone.”
Trailing Kansas
Meanwhile, thousands of teachers are receiving COVID-19 vaccines in Wyandotte and Johnson counties, and district officials there have decided that it is finally safe enough to allow all students back in classrooms full time.
Bonner Springs teachers were among the first in Kansas to get vaccines. The more than 300 educators in that district were getting their second round of shots last week, and district officials hope to bring all students back to classrooms four days a week by the end of the month. Students will learn online on Fridays.
“We are excited,” said Kaela Williams, district spokeswoman, adding that everyone will still need to wear masks and social distance.
Williams said her district could move so quickly because “Wyandotte County prioritized school staff and educators early on, and our superintendent was flexible.”
In the KCK district, more than half of the 4,000 employees signed up for shots. They started getting the first ones last month.
When Kansas opened its second phase of vaccine eligibility, the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment said all school districts would coordinate with Children’s Mercy to get vaccinations for interested teachers and staff.
In Olathe, all students will be allowed in classrooms full-time for the first time this school year starting on March 1. Previously, only younger children went full time; older students did a hybrid, with online learning from home part of the time.
And in Blue Valley, all students will return to classrooms on March 23, given that the number of daily COVID-19 cases remains steady or drops.
“The decision was made after an extensive review of declining COVID-19 numbers in our community, the active vaccination rollout which includes two doses, plans for voluntary testing opportunities for students and staff and successful mitigation strategies that have led to little or no spread of the virus within schools,” Blue Valley Superintendent Tonya Merrigan said in a statement.
Eric Punswick, chief human resources officer, said last week that 991 Blue Valley employees had been vaccinated so far. That’s out of more than 3,000 staff members who agreed to receive the vaccine.
Districts are giving priority to school nurses, special education teachers, staff with disabilities and employees above the age of 60. Punswick expects the remaining staff members to receive their first dose later this month.
Includes reporting by The Star’s Sarah Ritter.
This story was originally published February 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
