‘war’ in New York public schools by resistance from some teachers to get vaccinated | Society

Of the 70 million unvaccinated Americans – a headache for the Biden administration amid the surge and contagiousness of the delta variant – many teachers are prepared to take their individual right not to be immune to it. COVID until the last consequences. After controversies in several southern states over the mandate of the mask in classrooms, the compulsory nature of the vaccine for the workforce of educational centers has teachers in public schools in New York, the largest network in the country.

Two weeks after the start of the school year, the first in person after an 18-month pandemic, with a mandate for masks for students, a federal appeals court suspended the teachers’ vaccination mandate late this Friday, a suspension that will take effect from this Friday. midnight next Monday. The decision affects some 150,000 workers in the public network and contravenes the order of the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, which has been bitterly contested by powerful teachers’ unions.

The deadline given by the court coincides with the deadline that the town hall gave teachers to get vaccinated with at least one dose against covid-19. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which emphasizes the provisional nature of the decision, has referred the case to another jurisdiction, but many doubt it can be resolved in time, even as the three judges charged with the consider deliberate throughout the weekend. . Senior municipal officials cited by the newspaper The New York Times they hope that the final decision confirms the compulsory nature of vaccination for adults – teachers and auxiliary staff – employed in public centers.

Unlike cities like Los Angeles, which will require vaccination for all children over 12, New York has limited mask use, hand hygiene and office separation, and safety measures for children. students against the coronavirus, the incidence of which is dramatically worsening in the United States, with a 26% increase in mortality in the past 14 days. In addition to the political struggle generated in the country by the compulsory vaccination plan launched by the Biden administration, there is the worrying panorama of a possible shortage of staff and services in schools where a large number of teachers and staff auxiliaries are not vaccinated. Parents’ fear and union reluctance collided for weeks.

But the controversy also drew justice. After a first conviction pronounced on the 10th by the arbitration system, and which was favorable to the irredentist teachers – they obtained the authorization to perform other tasks outside the classrooms and not to be punished with a payroll cut for refusing the vaccine – last week, the newspaper recalls, a New York State Supreme Court judge nonetheless ruled that the city could keep the mandate in effect, after considering a new union trial. The judge pointed out that state and federal courts had upheld the mandatory vaccination orders. On Thursday, a Brooklyn District Federal Judge insisted the vaccination mandate is “a rational political decision on how best to protect children during a pandemic.” Dissatisfied with the two decisions, the teachers appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal, which left the order in abeyance.

Meanwhile, the effectiveness of masks in preventing infection has been highlighted in the latest data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in its acronym; Federal Health Agency). Schools that have made the mask compulsory have far fewer infections than others, as the case of Arizona shows, where its use is not compulsory and which records up to 3.5 times more infections. The findings belong to a study carried out in a thousand counties across the country.