DES MOINES, Iowa — After Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a requirement Friday for schools to offer 100 percent in-person learning five days a week, Iowa’s teachers are feeling rushed to get a vaccine before the law goes into effect on Feb. 15.
Starting Monday, teachers in Polk County are eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but with demand exceeding supply it is becoming difficult for educators to book an appointment.
Kristen Massa, an art teacher at Walnut Creek Elementary School, said their principal tried to allow adequate time during the work day for faculty to book appointments, but most could not get a time slot.
“Anxieties are high. Teachers are crying because they couldn’t get a vaccine on Friday and it’s like the weight and the gravity of the situation just kind of really hits you hard,” Massa said. “This is not what I want to be doing and it’s not how it’s supposed to be.”
In an email to Des Moines Public Schools employees on Friday, teachers and school staff were instructed to make an appointment through the various options available on the Polk County Health Department site. Massa said most of the vaccination sites did not have availabilities and that only a handful of her colleagues were able to get an appointment.
“It’s just made everything I think a lot more tense because no one really knows exactly what you’re supposed to be doing,” she said. “It’s all just kind of a guessing game as to when a pharmacy might get a dose or a shipment of vaccines.”
In a Friday press conference, the Polk County Health Department said it will take some time before all eligible citizens can get vaccinated due to a shortage in the supply, a symptom of a larger national trend.
“We are very frustrated because we have had many of the process and procedures in place to vaccinate a large number of people but we simply, obviously, do not have enough vaccine,” Supervisor Angela Connolly said.
On Feb. 1, pre-kindergarten through 12th grade staff, childcare workers and early childhood educators will join the list of Polk County residents able to get vaccinated. However, all appointments this week through the county health department were completely booked within 10 minutes of registration opening Friday at noon.
“We are still vaccinating the 1A health care workers that did not receive their vaccine earlier,” Polk County Health Department director Helen Eddy said Friday, “You can you can see the math doesn’t add up.”
Massa said the reality that educators will not be able to receive both dosages of the vaccine, if even one, before they are mandated by law to return to the classroom is troubling.
“For the most part we want to be at school. I think it just comes down to how safe do we feel,” she said.
Although a new CDC report last Tuesday showed low spread of the coronavirus in schools — especially with masks and social distancing — Massa said the chance alone is what worries her and her colleagues.
“The fear of if we all start getting sick and then there’s not enough subs to go around, then what happens? Our system is pretty much [going to] crumble by itself,” she said. “We don’t know who’s going to get sick and who’s not going to get sick and who’s going to be fine. That’s scary.”