Portland-area educators express mixed feelings when they receive first dose of COVID-19 vaccine

Teachers and school staff most likely to come face to face with students in the coming weeks received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, which sparked a range of emotions.

Among them, education workers said: Temporary hope. Fear. Recognition. Guilt. Relief.

Diana Rowey, a music teacher at Woodstock Elementary School in Southeast Portland, said she sometimes struggled to feel isolated and worry about the future. Like the rest of her colleagues across the district, she interacted with her students via a screen and said the months of virtual teaching earned her much more than the in-person time of years past.

“It makes me appreciate the community building and the joyful times we had in class even more,” Rowey said.

Rowey has underlying health issues, she said, which makes it especially important that she get the shot before she can return to teaching in person.

She was among thousands of education workers in the three-county metropolitan area who received appointments for mass immunization at the Oregon Convention Center. He opened up to the first of that group – people who work in K-12 education and daycare centers and preschools – just days after Governor Kate Brown announced they would be placed in front of the the elderly on the state’s priority list.

The Oregon Convention Center was swarming with National Guard reservists as school workers lined up, spaced at least six feet apart, to show up early in the morning for their immunization appointments.

The educators were transported to the facility’s cavernous ballroom, where staff from Legacy Health and Providence Medical Group injected them with an injection of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. After waiting 15 minutes in case they had a reaction and making an appointment for a second dose, the vaccinated educators were free to leave.

Amanda Shwetzer, secretary and registrar of Glencoe Elementary School, has also been working from home since last March, when Brown ordered the state’s public schools closed.

Shwetzer told The Oregonian / OregonLive that she was happy she and her colleagues could get the shots. But she said “it breaks my heart” that she was vaccinated when her mother, who lives in a nursing home for the elderly, did not.

“If I could have given him my chance, I would have done it,” said Shwetzer.

Shwetzer said it was essential that she and her colleagues be vaccinated otherwise they would not feel comfortable returning to work. A union survey of Portland public school teachers showed that only about 14% of educators in the district were willing to return to classrooms with limited capacity, two hours at a time.

It was December, when coronavirus infections were double what they are now and it was unclear when the Oregonians would start receiving doses of the vaccine. The high number of cases may not have been a factor, as only 16% of educators surveyed said they would feel comfortable returning to class if the number of cases declined.

The union did not ask its members whether vaccinations were a factor in their willingness to work there.

Several studies have shown that children under the age of 10 do not spread the coronavirus as often as tweens, teens and adults. The Oregon Health Authority has reported 20 cases of coronavirus among the roughly 50,000 public school students who regularly attended in-person classes in December and so far in January.

Forty-three employees at these schools tested positive during the same period, although the agency has not tracked the infections in the classrooms.

Kathy Price, administrative assistant at Cottonwood School, interacts regularly with several students when the class is in session at South Portland Charter School.

She wears a lot of hats, she told The Oregonian / OregonLive. Price substitutes for absent teachers, organizes disciplinary interventions for students and provides them with medical care.

She regrets seeing her students and is sad that children grow up and change without her being able to witness their development.

“I just want to be with the kids again,” Price said.

This is why Price said she was willing to get the shot, even though she has reservations about the safety of the vaccine and its potential long-term effects.

“It’s all so new,” Price said. “It’s a bit of a relief that this is happening. But, at the same time, it’s a bit of the unknown.

Robin Kobrowski, principal of the Beaverton School District, said a large part of her job during distance learning involves providing emotional support to her staff, including reaching out to people who may be struggling and develop relationships with everyone.

Many of its 75 teachers, administrators, assistants and other educators at Springville K-8 School are grateful for being able to get the vaccine “knowing that every citizen of Oregon needs it,” Kobrowski said.

The Oregon Convention Center is expected to administer about 2,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine per day to school district employees and childcare workers across the Portland metropolitan area.

There are approximately 40,000 eligible educators in the region, plus 20,000 other child care and preschool workers. Public schools in Portland, the state’s largest district, employ approximately 3,600 people.

The district divided its vaccine distribution list into four “waves,” with elementary educators and those volunteering for its limited in-person sessions, two hours a day for classes made up of students with acute needs. tutoring.

Portland public school officials predict that it will take at least four weeks for every educator in the district to be vaccinated and state officials have projected an even longer schedule, estimating that about three-quarters of workers in the area education, at most, will receive a first dose by the end of the first four weeks.

Oregon’s immunization efforts are just one of many logistical hurdles districts must overcome before they organize a full-scale school reopening.

Most districts have prioritized the return of primary school students, in line with their plans to reopen.

At Portland Public Schools, officials say they aim to start offering in-person options to families of fifth-graders and younger students in early February.

A first-grade teacher who received a first dose on Wednesday and received the second dose exactly on schedule would be considered fully immunized by March 3.

In the Lake Oswego district, Superintendent Lora De La Cruz announced that elementary school students would begin face-to-face classes at the end of February, postponing previous plans after a backlash from the teachers’ union.

De La Cruz and Portland superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero said vaccinations were a critical step back to school.

Union leaders say many educators are terrified of going back to class without being vaccinated.

“Educators who have dedicated years of their lives educating the children of Lake Oswego were talking about leaving the classroom,” said Kelly Fitzsimmons, president of the Lake Oswego Educational Association, after the district pushed back. its plans to reopen.

Brooke Herbert contributed to this report.

– Eder Campuzano and Fedor Zarkhin