Local teachers’ union is calling for Santa Fe public schools to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory.
The National Education Association-Santa Fe supports a vaccination mandate for all employees, including contractors, as well as students over the age of 12, union president Grace Mayer told the Santa Fe School Board on Thursday.
The union would also like to see mandatory weekly tests for children under 12 who are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez has warned that implementing a vaccination mandate could have an impact on the district’s recruitment efforts.
While 93 percent of district staff are vaccinated, those percentages are slightly lower for teachers in the classrooms.
Just over 88 percent of high school teachers were fully vaccinated by Thursday and nearly 93 percent of preschool and elementary school teachers were vaccinated.
As of August 27, 60 students and eight employees on campus had been contagious with COVID-19 since the start of the school year.
That’s less than 1 percent of enrollments in the entire district, and only two of those cases were from the district, said Anita Hett, the district’s senior nurse.
“What we find is that it comes from the community,” she said. “At this point, the prevalence rate seems to be very, very low.”
The district has requested to become a COVID-19 testing site, which could accelerate delays in parents and students testing for COVID-19 after close contact, Chavez said.
The Department of Public Education released updated guidelines on safety from COVID-19 in schools on Thursday, clarifying that vaccine status does not affect social distancing requirements among students.
In other news, the school board appointed Sascha Guinn Anderson to take over the tenure of Lorraine Price, who died last month at the age of 72.
Anderson, whose children are enrolled in the district, is the spokesperson for Mayor Alan Webber’s re-election campaign.
People living in District 5 that Price represented will still be voting for a school council member in November, but Anderson is the only person who has submitted papers that appear on the ballot.
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