In the last few weeks, Vermont has started offering COVID-19 vaccines to K-12 public and private school teachers and staff, early educators and child care workers, as the state pushes to get kids back into classrooms full time this spring. At one recent vaccination clinic for educators, teachers expressed excitement and relief as they received their shots.
The effort to get educators vaccinated happened later than many teachers hoped. The state’s teachers’ union put pressure on the Scott administration for weeks ahead of the decision. To get the 27,600 school staff now eligible across Vermont vaccinated, the state is bringing in the Vermont National Guard to help host mass vaccination drives, like one at the gymnasium of Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, held on a crisp spring day this week.
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Eight vaccination stations were set up inside the gym, which was flanked by red and white banners hailing past state championships in golf, hockey and nordic skiing, among others. Kenny Chesney’s “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” could be heard playing through a speaker. (A Guard spokesperson said the Guard chooses the music, and when they were vaccinating older Vermonters, they played artists like Frank Sinatra.)
The inoculation process is fairly efficient.
“You'll come in the door, they'll verify your appointment, [you'll] sit down. There is a little bit of paperwork to fill out,” explained Maj. Dan Dykeman, with the National Guard.
“After you're done [with] that, you kind of sit there and wait for a vaccination station to open up, sit with the provider for a couple seconds, get your shot and then sit through the 15-minute observation period. And then you know, again, you're out the door.”
In all, it’s about a 20-minute process. About a thousand people were signed up to get vaccinated throughout the day. And there seemed to be one prevailing emotion among them: excitement.
“Just really excited,” said Harry Voelkel, a teaching graduate student intern at Mount Abe High School in Bristol.
He said everyone – teachers and students – are trying hard to give and receive the education they deserve.
“But there are a lot of, I think, barriers in play. So hopefully, with the vaccine widespread next year, things will be a little more back to normal,” Voelkel said.
The last year has been anything but normal for many K-12 students: Some are now stuck every day in homes that aren’t safe, or that lack the broadband internet access needed for virtual learning.
Others, as highlighted during a recent Scott administration COVID-19 briefing, are suffering mental health impacts as a result of the pandemic. And while no official number exists, the head of the Vermont Principals Association says chronic absenteeism is up. By some estimates hundreds of students have dropped all contact with teachers and seemingly vanished.
All this has the state hurrying to try to get kids back into school every day.
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For special education teacher Robin Fyles, getting the vaccine means feeling safer while interacting with her students, like one who she said is on the autism spectrum and is very tactile.
“There is no social distancing with the student. So basically, I feel much more, you know, safe now, knowing that he's always having that need to touch and he comforts himself that way,” Fyles said. “So yeah, I think I've been a little more obviously apprehensive and worried prior to vaccination. Now, I feel like I have a safeguard in place.”
Fyles has been in the classroom at St. Albans Town Education Center four-days-a-week and teaching remotely for one. And she said while that’s been hard for some students, others seem to flourish.
"I've never been so excited to get a vaccine in my life. Even my students were excited. Today, they were cheering me on virtually." - Mary Muroski, fifth grade teacher at Hinesburg Community School
“I actually feel they've learned more remotely than they do in person, whether that's based on, you know, their disability,” she said.
Mary Muroski teaches fifth grade at Hinesburg Community School, and even from behind her mask, you could tell she was beaming as she headed in to get her shot.
“I've never been so excited to get a vaccine in my life,” she said. “Even my students were excited. Today, they were cheering me on virtually.”
For Muroski, who’s been teaching four-days-a-week in the classroom since September, things have gone pretty smoothly. No one in her grade has gotten sick. Still, in her 20 years in the classroom, she says this last one has been the most challenging.
“As challenging as it’s been for the adults, I feel like the kids have been adapting so well. I'm really proud of how amazing the kids have been,” Muroski said. “So even though we worry about kids, I feel like, you know, of course they'll remember this, but I feel like the way they've adapted to wearing masks, social distancing, has been far beyond what we could have ever expected of them.”
The Agency of Education says so far, nearly half of teachers and school staff have had their first dose or are signed up for a vaccine. And they plan to hold more clinics like this one in the coming weeks.
One more common theme we heard from educators: Get vaccinated when it’s your turn. Each shot brings things a bit closer to normal.
Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or get in touch with reporters Brittany Patterson @amusedbrit and Henry Epp @thehenryepp.
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