No choice but to enforce vaccination requirement, Peninsula school board is told

The Peninsula School District has no choice but to comply with the state mandate for vaccination of teachers and staff, the president of the school board made clear during a board meeting Thursday night.

But Superintendent Krestin Bahr said the mandate would be carried out with a light touch.

“We are trying to do this in a way that is human and loving, because we have amazing staff,” she said. “We are trying to do what we must in ways that are caring and confidential.”

School board president David Olson opened the Aug. 26 meeting by reading from a letter sent to all school boards from the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal.

In the letter, Reykdal said OSPI filed an emergency rule outlining how schools may be denied state funding if they do not comply with safety measures, including mask and vaccine mandates, within a certain time.

Not optional by district

“This is not at the discretion of school boards or superintendents,” Reykdal added, according to Olson, but an emergency public health measure that must be obeyed.

Reykdal told reporters Aug. 13 that he believes 70 percent of public education employees are already vaccinated. Washington state school districts and private schools employ more than 160,000 people.

“Statewide, nationwide and global data and research show us that universal masking and widespread vaccinations are the two most effective measures our schools can utilize to combat virus spread,” Reykdal wrote in the letter. “If there is minimal virus spread, the likelihood that you will need to close classrooms or entire schools is low.”

The reaction from the board was mostly resignation.

“I’m saddened because we’re being threatened,” said board member Chuck West. He added later, “I wish there was a two-way conversation happening.”

“I don’t know what the next week is going to bring,” he said. “It seems like every week something new comes down the pipe. More than the virus, what worries me is the next mandate.”

The directive requires school employees to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18. For those taking the two-dose vaccines, that means they will have to have their first shot by early September — by Sept. 13 for Pfizer or Sept. 6 for Moderna. School resumes Tuesday, Sept. 7.

Reykdal told reporters earlier this month: “We have outbreaks all over the South right now just as they’re starting school, in large part because they are not vaccinating or an even bigger part because they won’t wear face coverings as a matter of their ideology. ... We have demonstrated the effectiveness of our safety protocols, and we’re going to do it again this school year, and now with vaccines we can open schools, broadly, keep them open and keep folks safe.”

How it will work

Bahr and the district’s human resources director, Carolyn Antholt, laid out for the board the way the vaccination mandate would be administered. Among the points:

▪ Vaccination status will be kept confidential. Teachers and staff will present their proof of vaccination to a single site coordinator — usually a vice-principal — who will affirm their status confidentially to human resources. “It goes straight to a database that only Human Resources can see,” Antholt said. She added that site coordinators have all been trained to follow the privacy rules of HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

▪ The vaccination mandate does not apply to students, or to casual visitors, like parents. It will apply to volunteers who come into the school regularly, and to contractors, like some part-time workers.

▪ Religious exemptions will be allowed, and the process of getting one will be relatively simple, Bahr said. There is a five-question form to fill out, and even that can be bypassed. “I can assure our staff this is not a long process,” Bahr said. “People don’t even have to fill out the form. They can just sit down with Carolyn, and it’s done.”

▪ Medical exemptions will also be allowed, but the form for that application has not yet been received from the state.

▪ Accommodating persons receiving religious or medical exemptions might involve a change in their duties to protect children and colleagues. “This might involve some transfers,” or a switch to remote learning duties, Antholt said.

West asked how many teachers and staff might quit rather than take the vaccine.

“One hears in the rumor mill that a lot of people may just walk away,” he said.

“This is a hard process, we’re trying to do it as compassionately as possible, and hopefully people will not feel they have to leave their jobs,” Antholt replied.

Public weighs in

The issue was debated with some passion during the public comment session of the meeting.

“I do believe we have the right to choose, and we as citizens should not be beholden to the government,” said Kayleen Westford, who said she was a former English teacher. “And we have the right to choose what we put in our bodies.”

But Jennifer Flint, who said she has lived in the district for 18 years, said “We need to respect the science. And all of it points to wearing a mask and getting vaccinated .... We all get to make choices, but sometimes your choices impact others. If you want your kids to go to school, if you want to have a job, if you want life back to normal, suck it up and get a vaccination.”

Both women sat down to applause.

More on CRT debate

During public comments, the school board also heard a letter asking the board to reconsider a resolution passed June 22 that committed the district not to teach “critical race theory,” which is not taught in the Peninsula School District and has become a target of conservative groups. Critical race theory is a once-obscure academic concept that seeks to explore ways past racism persists in sometimes unrecognized ways in today’s law and other institutions.

Reading from the letter, Thelma Brown, a retired principal, said the nearly 600 signers of the letter worry that the resolution “catered to partisan political pressure from some conservative groups, rather than standing up for the best education our students deserve.”

The board also heard from several school bus drivers, para-educators and clerical workers whose unions are currently in negotiations. Many complained about losing all of their sick days to COVID-19, and then finding they had to take unpaid days off later. Bus drivers complained of being given just enough hours during the school year that they couldn’t qualify for unemployment in the summer.

Drivers also complained of low pay and warned that the district was losing drivers to others, like the private First Student system that serves Tacoma schools.

Driver Spencer Wiklund noted that First Student pays $22.50 an hour to start, with a $3,000 signing bonus. Peninsula pays $22.41 at the top, he said. Because drivers are going to other districts, Peninsula is down to 71 bus drivers from a high of 83, he said.

Paraeducators, too, complained of working for “poverty wages.” One woman said she takes home $1,500 a month, is on food stamps, and is about to be evicted from her apartment.

In other business, the school board:

▪ Approved a budget of $149,356,633 for the 2021-22 school year. The budget includes $66.5 million for certificated employees — that is, teachers and their aides — and $23.4 million for classified employees, which include maintenance, food service, groundskeepers and other support staff. Budget director Karen Anderson said the budget is based on an estimate of 9,203 full-time K-12 students. That’s up from a pandemic low of 7,926, she said, but still only about 83 percent of pre-COVID levels.

▪ Heard the first reading of a resolution that sets an “operating protocol” for the school board that seems designed to rein in political activity by individual board members. Among other things, it directs that board members refer community queries and complaints, including media inquiries, to the district superintendent or her staff.

A key section points out that “individual board members do not have governing authority. Only the Board, as a whole, has such authority. The board members agree that an individual board member will not take unilateral action or make promises on behalf of the Board or District.”

Olson, the board president, has drawn criticism for speaking at conservative political meetings and promising to introduce specific resolutions.

The August 26 Peninsula School Board meeting can be viewed on the district YouTube channel.