School districts in North Texas are making plans to get teachers and other employees vaccinated. Last week, the Texas Department of State Health Services expanded vaccine eligibility to include school district employees and people who work in childcare.
Monday, Arlington firefighters vaccinated 3,500 Arlington ISD employees at the ESports Stadium. Combined with those who had met earlier criteria for eligibility, all district employees who had signed up had received the vaccine.
"We're excited to be doing the teachers now, which means we're getting closer to the end," says Arlington Fire Chief Don Crowson. "I'm from Arlington. I'm glad to see Arlington back to work."
Starting Wednesday, firefighters started vaccinating school district employees from Kennedale and Mansfield ISDs.
Crowson says teachers vaccinated this week are receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Starting tomorrow, he says firefighters will resume second doses of the Moderna vaccine for people who had previously received the first dose at the stadium.
"We have a very clever team here. We're a logistics organization. We can manifest procedures in a hurry," Crowson says. "We've done that here. We've adjusted along the way, and now we've fine-tuned this machine to where it's very fast."
Later this month, Crowson says FEMA and the military, which are currently at Globe Life Field, will take over operations that had been at ESports Stadium. He says that will free up firefighters to reach the homebound and others who may be eligible but have not been able to reach a vaccination site.
"We're not stopping, but we're changing our tactics slightly because the environment is changing," Crowson says. "We're a special event venue city. Those venues want to be operating at 100%. I think operations like this get us closer to that. We're certainly not there yet, but we're getting closer."
Dallas ISD says all of its employees are now eligible for the vaccine and is encouraging them to register here and click "Education" in the "Field of Work" section.
Denton County plans to vaccinate school district employees and childcare workers at the vaccination hub at Texas Motor Speedway this Friday from 3 to 7 p.m. Judge Andy Eads says Denton County has identified 13,600 educators on the county's wait list; 3,500 will be vaccinated Friday.
"Being able to provide significant numbers of vaccines to our residents while also beginning to vaccinate our educators is a win-win for everyone. We are working aggressively to get shots in arms to help our children get back in the classrooms and begin to return to normal across the board," Eads wrote in a statement.
People can sign up in Denton County at DentonCounty.gov/vaccine .
Registration in Tarrant County is available here.
