Baker Administration Won't Let MA Teachers Jump Vaccination Line

MASSACHUSETTS — The Baker administration said Thursday that teachers will not be prioritized for the coronavirus vaccine over the "sickest, oldest and most vulnerable residents in Massachusetts," drawing an immediate rebuke from the state's biggest educator unions.

Tim Buckley, a senior adviser to Governor Charlie Baker, issued the statement Thursday after a 45-minute meeting where the unions made a request to let teachers get vaccinated in schools. Representatives for the unions called the meeting and the administration's response "disappointing."

"The Baker-Polito Administration is dismayed that despite reasonable efforts to prioritize educator vaccinations, the teachers’ unions continue to demand the Commonwealth take hundreds of thousands of vaccines away from the sickest, oldest and most vulnerable residents in Massachusetts and divert them to the unions’ members, 95 percent of which are under age 65," Buckley said.

The tensions compound a growing divide between the two sides, which escalated earlier this month when Baker's education secretary was given authority to push public school districts to resume full-time, in-person learning this spring. Most schools have been offering a mix of in-person and remote learning since the start of the school year, and several have said the quicker timeline will present staffing problems.

The unions proposed having firefighters give the vaccine to teachers at schools during Thursday's meeting, the Boston Globe reported. "It did not go well. We’re not getting approval at this point," Beth Kontos, president of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, told the newspaper. "At this point, they’re not budging."

Teachers became eligible to get the vaccination on Thursday, but they have to find and book appointments at mass vaccination sites and facilities already designated by the state to distribute the vaccines. They are also eligible to book appointments at CVS pharmacies under a federal program. Baker only opened the state's sites to teachers after the Biden administration announced the federal program.

"The administration implores the unions to do the math: the state only gets 150,000 first doses every week," Buckley added. "There are about one million eligible residents comprised of educators, older adults and people with serious health conditions. Diverting hundreds of thousands of vaccines to an exclusive, teacher-only distribution system would deny the most vulnerable and the most disproportionately impacted residents hundreds of thousands of vaccines.

The union proposal was backed by 48 state lawmakers, who signed a letter to Baker urging him to adopt the plan. The Baker administration has set up "teachers only days" at the state's mass vaccination sites, but the unions say the 25,000 doses available on those days are not enough to get all teachers vaccinated before the resumption of full-time, in-person learning.

"Building an entirely new, exclusive, teacher-only, school by school distribution system would make Massachusetts’ vaccination system slower, less equitable and far more complicated," Buckley said.