Superintendent Lisa Herring continued her defense of Atlanta Public Schools’ vaccination plan Wednesday after Gov. Brian Kemp blasted the district for taking more than two weeks to start giving shots to teachers.
The state announced in late February that Georgia’s teachers would be eligible for the vaccine beginning Monday.
APS, working with the Fulton County Board of Health, plans to provide the first doses to up to 8,000 employees during mass events on March 24, 26 and 27.
That schedule drew Kemp’s ire. On Monday, he called the delay “a disservice to their teachers” and accused APS leaders of playing “pandemic politics.”
Herring rejected that notion during a Wednesday forum with other metro Atlanta superintendents hosted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“To be clear we have not done any disservice to our teachers. If anything we have planned as strategically as we possibly could to ensure that our teachers would be vaccinated,” Herring said. “If we had those vaccines available at any time earlier, we would also have been prepared to deploy our ability to vaccinate our teachers.”
Atlanta school board Chairman Jason Esteves put it more directly in a tweet this week: “We’d love to have an event this weekend, we just need the governor to send us supply.”
Fulton County Board of Health spokeswoman Sheena R. Haynes said preparations for teacher vaccinations began six weeks ago in anticipation of the state expanding eligibility to include educators.
She said March 24 “was selected as a potential date that this group would be eligible to receive the vaccine.” At the time, the state had yet to announce the date for the start of teacher vaccinations.
“However, once the official announcement was made that teachers could be vaccinated beginning March 8, Atlanta Public Schools decided to move forward with hosting the [March 24] event because a lot of planning had already taken place. As their partner, we supported their decision,” Haynes said, in an email to The AJC.
The county health board also is working with Fulton County Schools, which will hold its first staff vaccine event March 22.
Other school systems began vaccinating teachers this week, though their plans vary.
Kemp first took aim at APS on Monday after touring a Gwinnett County vaccination site.
In early February, the Atlanta school board approved a resolution urging the state to prioritize vaccines for teachers. So when APS announced it wouldn’t begin vaccinations as soon as teachers were eligible, Kemp pounced.
“Atlanta Public Schools board sent me a letter demanding that teachers needed to be vaccinated when they knew dang well I couldn’t do that. We didn’t have the supply to do that,” he said Monday. “It was pandemic politics at its best, and now they’re going to wait two or three weeks. I believe that they’re doing a disservice to their teachers.”
The governor made similar remarks during a Wednesday news conference, but this time he didn’t specifically call out APS.
“Even though we gave some school systems a 10-day heads up we have some of them that have elected to wait to get their teachers vaccinated,” he said.
Herring said APS employees who want to get vaccinated before the district’s mass events can make their own appointments to do so. Haynes said the county health board “provided resources to assist those wishing to be vaccinated earlier.”
Kemp’s remarks are “unfortunate,” Herring said. APS has been planning for “many, many months.”
“Atlanta Public Schools is proud of the work that we’ve done for our faculty and staff and teachers and never has our focus been tied to disservice,” she said. “We appreciate the comment, but we’re very clear around what our work and focus has been.”
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