Fourth-grade teacher Don Haley worked with students in class. The Methow Valley Schools have been providing in-person instruction since September.
MVSD leader says ‘failure’ puts staff at risk
By Marcy Stamper
Methow Valley School District Supt. Tom Venable has blasted the governor and state health officials for not immediately providing COVID vaccines for teachers and other school staff who’ve been “bravely providing ‘in-person’ instruction” to students since September.
In two starkly worded letters sent just two days apart last week, Venable accused Gov. Jay Inslee of ignoring risks to the district’s staff, who were among the first in the state to return to the classroom.
“As a Superintendent, one of nearly a dozen others that have worked closely with their students, staff, parents and community to safely reopen their schools, taking full responsibility for the lives of students, educators, their families, and our rural communities, I ask that you ‘support’ us in our effort to deliver on the expectation you’ve established,” Venable wrote to Gov. Jay Inslee.
Assailing the “Get Ready” plan released by the state at the end of January, which creates a system for vaccinating teachers in the Puget Sound area and Spokane — where almost all education is still being conducted remotely — Venable asked Inslee to allow all K-12 educators already providing in-person instruction to be vaccinated right away. Venable signed his second letter saying, “Desperately Seeking Your Leadership.”
He followed up with a third letter this week in Q&A format, providing more information for Inslee about rates of in-person learning in Washington and vaccine prioritization for educators in other states.
State Sen. Brad Hawkins (R-12th Dist.) also wrote twice to Inslee to demand vaccines for educators. Believing he’d successfully made his case when the state put school employees in Phase B2, Hawkins declared Statewide School Employee Vaccination Day on Feb. 1. But on further scrutiny, the state’s vaccine graphic shifted the timeline for that phase from February to spring/summer, Hawkins said last week by email.
The letter Hawkins and others in the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee sent to Inslee in January was based on the existing graphic, which started Phase B2 in February. On Jan. 18, when school employees were made eligible in B2, Hawkins thought their vaccinations were right around the corner, he said last week.
“The current graphic, showing ‘Spring/Summer’ is obviously vague and has resulted in school employees being pushed out. I think Governor Inslee and the DOH [Washington Department of Health] pulled an ‘executive branch switcheroo’ with the timeline and it’s very frustrating,” Hawkins said last week by email.
The terminology for the phases has also changed. What used to be called Phase B2 is now 1B, Tier 2, according to DOH’s emergency communications consultant, Franji Mayes. The timeline in DOH’s new graphic shifts Phase 1B, Tier 2 to spring/summer, instead of February. Phase 1A has two tiers, and Phase 1B has 4 tiers, she said.
The new timeline means that some teachers won’t be eligible until after the school year is over, Venable said. “That’s just unacceptable,” he said.
Tracking the shots
School employees will be eligible for vaccines once at least 50% of all Washingtonians who are currently eligible (health care workers, residents of long-term care facilities, people over 65) have been vaccinated, said Katy Payne, Communications Director for the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).
DOH is not currently tracking the percentage of eligible people who’ve received the vaccine. As of Feb. 1, a total of 8.33% people in the state had received their first dose, according to DOH. In Okanagan County, almost 14% of the total population had been vaccinated as of Feb. 1, according to Mid-Valley Hospital in Omak.
The Washington Post has been tracking vaccine administration using data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the states. As of Feb. 7, the newspaper said Washington had vaccinated 32.4% of its prioritized population. The state currently has enough vaccine doses to cover just 39.6% of the prioritized population, according to their data.
Venable pointed to other states, including Oregon and California, that prioritized educators as front-line workers. In Oregon, educators are eligible for a vaccine before people who are age 80 and older.
Some local educators and child care providers have qualified for vaccines. At Little Star Montessori School in Winthrop, staff who screen students with COVID symptoms or who work in learning environments where student masking is not an option were able to get vaccinated, Executive Director Dani Reynaud said. That guideline is now on hold while the clinics await more vaccine doses and other communities catch up, she said. Little Star is still waiting to learn when the rest of its teachers and child care providers become eligible.
The Washington Education Association (WEA), the union that represents educators, also wrote to Inslee and the state secretary of health in January to demand that all educators — those currently in schools and those yet to return to in-person settings — have access to the vaccine, regardless of age.
In a follow-up letter, WEA said the state shouldn’t leave it to school districts to ensure workplace safety, particularly without adequate testing and with highly contagious COVID variants spreading.
The fact that 200,000 students across the state have been doing in-person learning with “minimal in-school transmission” shows that “onsite instruction can be done with reasonable safety,” Inslee wrote in response to WEA.
Only one out of six Washington students (about 200,000 in all) is attending school in person, Venable said. In the Methow, the vast majority of students — 80% of elementary students and 95% of high school students, about 610 in all — opted for the hybrid model, with two days of in-person instruction and three of remote education.
Some staff members, depending on their level of risk, are filling positions that don’t require in-person contact, Venable said.
The Methow Valley took the first step but, as fall progressed, all school districts in Okanogan County resumed in-person education for all grades, Venable said. School superintendents in Pateros, Brewster and Okanogan schools have also urged Inslee to expedite vaccines.
‘Get Ready’ plan
Venable and other local educators were flabbergasted by the “Get Ready” vaccination plan released at the end of January by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal in conjunction with Kaiser Permanente, a health insurer and medical provider. The plan starts with school districts along the I-5 corridor — such as Seattle and Tacoma — and in Spokane, where most schools haven’t reopened.
Those areas were selected based on where Kaiser Permanente has staff, supplies and facilities, and they’re working with the company to arrange pop-up sites in rural areas and to find other providers, OSPI’s Payne said. School districts have also been encouraged to make their own arrangements with local providers — but only for employees who are already eligible, Payne said.
In its announcement of the plan, OSPI said it would “focus on supporting a safe return to school for communities across the state,” without addressing districts that have already returned to the classroom.
Areas covered by the plan encompass more than 80% of school employees. “OSPI and DOH are additionally planning further efforts to define potential sites more proximate to Central Washington school employees,” OSPI said.
“Keeping our educators and school staff safe is very important to me,” Inslee said about the Get Ready plan. “This announcement does not allow educators to move ahead in the current prioritization; it means when it is their turn, we are ready to move ahead.”
While Methow Valley school staff are dedicated and know what they’re doing is critical, the state’s approach makes them feel “disheartened, abandoned and invisible, like they’ve been ignored,” Venable said. In-person instruction is vital not only for academics, but also for students’ social and emotional development and support, he said.
Statewide, there are about 20,000 educators providing in-person instruction, 1,500 of them in Okanogan County. The entire statewide work force in education is about 143,000, Venable said.
If the state doesn’t change the priorities for all educators, Venable would like more discretion given to local public health agencies to devise strategies for their own communities. “Their hands are tied,” with strict guidelines that threaten punitive action for vaccinating ineligible individuals, Venable said.
“All vaccine providers are balancing three competing directives: vaccinate within the phase, vaccinate as quickly as you can, and don’t waste any doses,” North Valley Hospital CEO John McReynolds said. At the end of each day, the hospital’s clinic considers how to use the extra doses that would be wasted if not used that evening.
North Valley has tried to focus on the group that’s next in line but, early on, eligibility guidelines weren’t always clear. If they do have leftover doses, North Valley has been calling local teachers who can get to the facility within a few minutes, McReynolds said. “But that is a difficult situation that each provider needs to address,” he said.
Neither Venable nor Hawkins was optimistic they’d hear from the governor. “I’m doubtful we’ll get a response. There is no evidence he’s listening to WEA or others,” Venable said. Neither had received a response as of press time.
Venable made a dire prediction in his letter to Inslee. “I fret this period of time may otherwise serve as a case study to be examined for years to come, highlighting the tragic failure of our current leadership … an unfortunate legacy that could have been avoided.”
