(Editor’s Note: Pascack Valley Regional District Board of Education member Gini Varghese has spearheaded the initiative for the BOE to send Governor Phil Murphy a resolution requesting to include public school district personnel in the Official Expert Vaccine Allotment Panel’s definition of frontline workers. Varghese gave a speech during Monday’s BOE meeting explaining the board members’ support of the vaccine resolution. Reporters covering Monday’s BOE meeting neglected to include this information in an article published that same night. Below is a transcription of Varghese’s speech.)

Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound mental and physical impact on every student, educator, staff, and community member within the Pascack Valley Regional District. This week will be one year of having our school district’s normal day-to-day functioning altered secondary to the pandemic. Such prolonged school modifications and at times school closures have had a direct effect on our students’ emotional, physical, social, and academic well-being to the extent that the repercussions will be felt for years if not for decades to come. As we learn more about this virus and its effects, we do know that it does not seem to impact children and young people as severely as adults; however, students cannot be taught without teachers and a school cannot be run without staff. There are many teachers and staff within our district who have risk factors that would make them rightfully more cautious about returning to in-person teaching. 

I feel that I can speak for the entire board when I say that we as board members care deeply about our students, educators, staff, and the community. We all would like to see our district return to daily in-person operations and I believe that one way to do this is to make the COVID-19 vaccine available to any district educator or staff member that would want to be vaccinated. Unfortunately, with the demand for the vaccine combined with the lack of supply, there is a lot of difficulties and leg work that needs to be done here in NJ to get an appointment to get the vaccine. There will be additional challenges with getting the vaccine for educators and district staff. Will they have to stay awake late at night trying to schedule an appointment? Will they have to worry that while they are teaching during the day, they are missing the opportunity to schedule an appointment? Will they have to use sick days or personal time to get the vaccine? In the last year, educators and staff have been called upon to go above and beyond and as such, they have been under a great deal of increased stress; getting the COVID-19 vaccine should not add to their stress. 

Thankfully, Gov. Murphy has announced that educators and school staff are immediately eligible to receive the vaccine; this is a change from his previous announcement that they would be eligible on March 15. This is very welcome news but the logistics of how and when that will happen are still being determined. As of now, Bergen County is not organizing any official vaccine distributions for schools. Our district has held yearly flu clinics through local CVS pharmacies at both Pascack Valley and Pascack Hills and we would like to support our educators and staff by arranging to have those same types of clinics at both schools for the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Gundersen has reached out to our health commission and to CVS to inquire about vaccinating our educators and staff and holding these COVID-19 vaccine clinics at the schools.

The resolution calls for Governor Murphy and other officials to make educators and school staff a priority for receiving the vaccine. Though Gov. Murphy did announce last week that educators and school staff are immediately eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, it is of the utmost importance for our board to still voice their viewpoint on this resolution. In doing so we will be proactive versus reactive to make educators and school staff a priority if there is ever the threat of another pandemic and vaccine eligibility is an issue. In addition, our resolution will indicate that we feel it is necessary to have educators and staff get the vaccine in a more efficient and organized manner in order to subsequently get our children back into school as soon as it is safe to do so.