California became the first state in the country this week to announce it would require employees in all schools, public and private, to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or face regular testing.
No such requirement is under consideration in Vermont right now. But several local public health and medical experts said they’d support one — and so has the state’s largest teachers union.
The Vermont-National Education Association would “absolutely” support such a mandate, whether put forward by the state or individual school districts, said Darren Allen, a spokesperson for the union.
“We have long said that vaccinations are the single most important way to ensure the safety of kids, educators and the community,” he said. The national NEA has also endorsed a vaccine mandate for teachers, as has Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
For now, the state is not requiring or even systematically tracking employee vaccination rates in schools. Officials with the Agency of Education have said their best guess about immunization coverage is simply “above 80%” based on the takeup rate at school-based vaccination clinics in the spring.
Despite surging cases, Gov. Phil Scott’s administration has so far signaled it favors a light touch on pandemic mitigation in schools. A two-page advisory memo released last week by the state to guide school reopening decisions recommends masking be required only until 80% of the eligible student population is fully vaccinated, and is entirely silent on teacher immunization.
Child cares, meanwhile, are operating with even less guidance from the state. As of June 14, there are no Covid-19 restrictions or requirements for child care or out-of-school programs, although it’s recommended that unvaccinated people over age 2 wear masks inside.
On Tuesday, Scott announced that certain state employees working in high-risk settings, including prisons, would be required to get vaccinated or face regular testing and other restrictions. But a wider vaccination mandate, including at schools or child care facilities, is not under consideration at this time, according to Rebecca Kelley, a spokesperson for the governor’s office.
“We know we have a high vaccination rate among school employees and teachers, and we’ll continue encouraging all Vermonters to get vaccinated because we know vaccines are highly effective, including against variants,” Kelley wrote in an email. “We are also continuing to make vaccines as accessible as possible for school employees, students and parents with school and community-based clinics across the state.”
Infectious disease and public health experts consulted by VTDigger, meanwhile, largely said they supported requiring workers in schools and child care facilities be vaccinated.
“The higher transmissibility of [the] Delta variant is making it clear that we need a layered approach again to preventing spread in schools,” said Annie Hoen, an associate professor of epidemiology at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine. “Requiring vaccination for schoolteachers and staff is one of the best, most effective and safest ways to do that.”
Benjamin Lee, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UVM Children’s Hospital who has studied Covid-19 transmission in schools, said he’d be “very supportive” of a mandate.
“I strongly believe that all teachers and school staff — and anybody that’s working with kids and with other vulnerable populations — should be vaccinated in order to provide an environment that’s as safe as possible for everyone,” he said.
Until we better understand the risks to children from Delta, schools should implement stronger protections than last year to reduce the risk of Covid transmission, said Liz Winterbauer, a consulting epidemiologist and health services researcher who teaches health courses at UVM and St. Michael’s College.
“Mandating vaccination for child care providers, teachers, and other staff in schools is a key component of a layered approach needed to protect kids,” she wrote in an email to VTDigger.
Vaccine mandates for teachers and child care providers would be “an important tool for protecting children too young to be vaccinated and also for ensuring educational continuity,” agreed Anne Sosin, a rural health researcher and policy fellow at Dartmouth College’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. But they should be used “in combination, rather than as a substitute, for more comprehensive mitigation strategies,” she added.
Tim Lahey, an infectious disease physician and director of clinical ethics at the University of Vermont Medical Center, said he wouldn’t go as far as an across-the-board requirement in all schools or child care centers.
“We shouldn’t abridge autonomy just for the purposes of virtue signaling,” he argued, and if vaccination rates are already very high in a particular place, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to impose a mandate. What an acceptable threshold would be is the “million-dollar question,” he added, although he suggested aiming for 85-90% coverage.
“Delta is making transmission risk a real problem in many areas of Vermont, so if an institution in such an area didn’t have fantastic vaccination rates despite other efforts, then mandates are ethically and legally defensible [and] reasonable,” he wrote in an email to VTDigger.
