Newton Public Schools Must Mandate COVID-19 Vaccination for Teachers and Staff

We are now less than two weeks out from the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, which will likely be entirely in person, and there’s something important that’s missing. Newton Public Schools has yet to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for teachers and staff. In school this year, like last year, students will likely spend five minutes at the end of each class sanitizing classroom surfaces, a timely procedure that in reality is not all that effective. We will also start the year with a mask mandate imposed by the state. However, if Newton Public Schools wanted to take an easier, safe, and highly effective measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our schools, it would require vaccination for all teachers and staff. In a CDC study last school year which analyzed “clusters” COVID-19 cases, teachers were shown to be at the heart of the spread at school. Vaccinations for teachers, therefore, should be mandatory.

A common response to the idea of requiring COVID-19 vaccines has been that the vaccines are no longer effective in preventing the spread of the Delta variant. Many misinterpreted a CDC report of an outbreak in Provincetown to mean that the vaccine was ineffective at preventing spread, but this is not the case. While the vaccines are not 100% effective (few things are), they certainly prevented a worse outbreak from forming in Provincetown and spreading across the region. Additional studies from the UK, Singapore, and Iceland have shown that vaccinated individuals carry less viral load and are less infectious than unvaccinated individuals. And this is all in addition to the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing individuals from getting COVID-19 in the first place.

Some have also questioned the legality of school districts mandating COVID-19 vaccinations. As of today, the three largest school districts in the US: New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, have mandated vaccinations for all teachers and staff, in addition to the states of Illinois, Oregon, and Washington. None of these mandates have been struck down.

As we enter a year of uncertainty, Newton Public Schools must do what it can to provide safety measures to protect students, families, and teachers. A COVID-19 vaccine mandate for teachers and staff has to be included in that.