Few San Diego County teachers, other school staff use vaccine appointments reserved for them

Vaccinations have been a major sticking point for some schools in reopening. Some teachers unions, such as San Diego Unified’s, said educators would not go back to classrooms until they have the chance to get fully vaccinated.

The county recently set aside vaccines and appointments for tens of thousands of school staff members, but less than a third are taking advantage of them — a phenomenon that is puzzling county school officials.

After weeks of being asked when the county would open up vaccinations to school staff and other essential workers, county officials announced last month that education employees would be vaccinated starting Feb. 27. The county reserved one in five of its vaccine doses for education workers.

To date more than 90,000 school staff members in the county — such as teachers, administrators and bus drivers — have been emailed special invitations for vaccine appointments that the county reserved for them.

Only about 29,000 have responded to those invitations and 23,000 have been vaccinated that way, according to the California Schools Voluntary Employees Benefits Association (VEBA), which is handling the appointments for K-12 school staff.

If there were a problem with staff not receiving their vaccine appointment links, then officials would be flooded with complaints and questions from school staff members unable to get their vaccine, said Bob Mueller, coordinator of special projects for the San Diego County Office of Education. What’s weird is that the office hasn’t received such complaints.

“All we’re hearing is crickets,” Mueller said during a Tuesday telebriefing to educators.

Some school staff members may have gotten vaccinated through their healthcare providers. Some districts, such as La Mesa-Spring Valley and Alpine Union, had direct partnerships with other agencies to vaccinate their staff.

And some staff members may have already been vaccinated during earlier tiers of vaccine eligibility. For example, school nurses and school staff age 65 and older already were eligible for the vaccine.

Mueller said the low response rate could mean two things: either school staff have already found other “creative” ways to get vaccinated, such as going to other providers like CVS or Rite Aid, or school staff simply don’t want to be vaccinated.

Multiple educator leaders rejected that theory, saying their colleagues overwhelmingly want to be vaccinated.

“That surprises me because I’m feeling that the overall consensus, at least with my bargaining unit members, is that they are getting vaccinated,” said Susan Skala, teachers union president at Chula Vista Elementary, which has not yet reopened.

Kelly Logan, teachers union president at Poway Unified, which has been open for elementary grades since October, similarly said teacher demand for the vaccine is high.

“I have not heard from a single teacher saying they do not wish to be vaccinated,” Logan said.

Mueller’s other explanation — that school staff have found other ways to get the vaccine — may be more likely.

Before the educator vaccine rollout began, county officials initially said that staff at schools that were already open or have signed agreements to reopen would be given vaccines first.

The county later changed that, giving the vaccine first to staff at schools in highly at-risk communities, as measured by the state’s Healthy Places Index. Many of those schools, though closed, are located in communities that were hard hit by COVID or have high numbers of low-income families.

Meanwhile teachers at schools that have been open for months wanted to be prioritized for vaccines too, because they were already teaching in-person, Logan said. But because Poway communities are ranked high on the Healthy Places Index, Poway teachers were at first prohibited from making appointments with the county during the first days of the rollout.

Logan said she knows of several teachers who looked for ways to get vaccinated. Some went to CVS and Rite Aid or drove as far away as Hemet to get the vaccine.

“We completely agree, teachers who work in communities hardest hit by the virus should have had priority access to vaccinations,” Logan said. “But we also believe educators who were already serving students in person should have been prioritized.”

By March 5, six days after vaccines were first opened to school staff, the county superintendent announced that staff in all schools and all communities were eligible for the vaccine.

Now to address the low response to the invitations, Mueller is asking school leaders to promote vaccinations to their staff and make sure staff know they can get vaccinated through VEBA.

School leaders cannot force their staff to get vaccinated, however. Mueller does not recommend schools ask their staff members if they’ve been vaccinated.

Soon the opportunity for reserved vaccine appointments for school staff will go away, Mueller warned. The county will stop reserving vaccines for school staff when demand decreases, he said.

Once that happens, education workers will remain eligible but will have to compete for appointments with the growing pool of other people vying for vaccines.

“This is a limited opportunity,” Mueller said. “We want to make sure that anybody who wants it, who’s a K-12 education worker, can get it now.”

Logan said she hopes the county will leave enough appointments for all educators to get their second vaccine doses regardless of how they got their first dose.

“Teachers in San Diego County will need their second vaccine dose soon, regardless of whether they got their first dose through the VEBA site or through a pharmacy,” she said.