BUFFALO (WBEN) - The ongoing debate and wrangling over a full return to in-calss learning across New York State takes another twist this week as the state will begin to learn more about how many teachers are vaccinated and how many are currently teaching in person.
Earlier this week Governor Cuomo announced that individual school districts would be responsible for gathering teacher vaccination data and then reporting those numbers to the state.
"We're going to ask the local districts to report on how many teachers have been vaccinated," said Cuomo during a Monday afternoon conference call. "Teachers are very concerned that before they return to the classroom, they're vaccinated - I understand that - so the question is how many have been vaccinated, and how many are in class and teaching?"
The CDC stated three weeks ago that teachers do not need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely.
"The CDC has recommended that vaccinations are not requisite to return back to the classroom if the community burden of disease is below certain benchmarks that they delineated in their recommendation," said Dr. Tom Russo of the Jacobs School of Medicine, who believes it's critical for students to get back to school as quickly as possible. "However, vaccination of teachers would provide an additional layer of protection."
When asked about what this request signals from the state, Niagara Falls Superintendent Mark Laurrie said the main key to focus on in regard to opening schools to more students is the social distancing requirement.
"The problem of moving more students back into schools will not change until there's clear definition on six feet or three feet, and with or without masks," said Laurrie. "If students are allowed to come back lesser feet apart, more students will be in school. Until you change that requirement, you won't see more students coming back to school...if vaccination numbers will lead to that decision, then it's a good thing, obviously."
Aside from the medical reasoning behind the teacher vaccination inquiry, Laurrie questions the process of the data collection, saying there must be a more efficient way.
"My initial reaction to collecting vaccination data is 'why do you have to go to the schools?'" said Laurrie. "Why don't we go to the source from where these vaccinations originated, be it a hospital or a county health department? It's my understanding that you write your place of employment down on the form to sign up - why not have a repository there that funnels into the state's system?"
Laurrie noted that districts didn't receive much notice on this project, as the data is due to the state Wednesday after the announcement was made Monday.
"I understand the purpose of it, but to me, it's fire, ready, aim, and it could be collected from a different source," Laurrie continued.