Superintendent says officials with confer further with eight employees in effort to convince them to comply
Superintendent Debbe Lancaster says even before the Fort Yukon-based school district board voted last month to adopt a covid-vaccination mandate, nearly nine in 10 of its 90 employees had already gotten the shot.
“At the time of the adoption, about 80 to 90 percent of our staff was already vaccinated,” she said in an interview Thursday.
Lancaster says the district had increased its vaccination rate by a few percentage points by Tuesday, the 30-day deadline set by the board. But, she said, four teachers and four classified employees still had not gotten the shot. So district officials want to talk with them about that.
“The remaining unvaccinated staff are being asked to leave their posts to participate in conferences to determine why they’re not vaccinated, and to explore all options to be considered in moving forward,” she said, reading from a statement issued by the district.
Lancaster they’ve not been fired, as the rumor mill has it. And she says those rumors were intensified today after a conservative blogger posted that erroneous information on the Must Read Alaska blogsite.
“No! Not at all – not since the day I got here on July the 1st, I’ve not recommended termination for anyone,” she said.
But district officials strongly believe in the importance of vaccinations, as shown in the board’s unanimous vote adopting the mandate.
“The main concern about this is the safety of the students,” says Raymond Panzo, the principal and a teacher at Circle School. It’s one of six scattered mainly around the Yukon River north of Fairbanks.
“I have two staff here who are not vaccinated,” he said Thursday. “One is a teacher’s aide, and the other is our custodian.”
Lancaster says district officials realize it’s important to talk with the eight vaccine-hesitant employees before the district considers its next move.
“There’s many reasons that people are choosing not to be vaccinated,” she said. “There’s medical reasons, there’s religious reasons, there’s ‘It’s my body, my choice’ ”
Lancaster says after the employees explain their reasoning, district officials may again urge them to get the shots and, based on their response, will then decide on how to proceed.
