Some teachers in Orange County are concerned over the DeSantis administration’s plans to roll back vaccine mandates for K-12 students.
Earlier this week, Governor Ron DeSantis said it's his intention to work with the Florida Surgeon General and legislature to roll back all required vaccines for K-12 students. Florida would be the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone of public health policy for keeping schoolchildren and adults safe from infectious diseases.
The governor says it should be up to parents to decide on vaccinations, not the state.
Teacher concerns in the classroom
When it comes to removing vaccine mandates for students, Apopka High AP Lit teacher Sasha Wallace said she has some concerns.
“I fully support someone's right as a parent to do what they think is best for their child, and I do think that if it goes against their religion or just their comfort level, that you know they have every right to do what they think. But at a certain point, that mindset endangers others,” said Wallace.
What will happen if formerly eradicated infectious diseases start to spread in schools, she asks, especially if everyone starts to opt out of getting formerly required school vaccines?
Right now, Florida K-12 students are required to get vaccines for highly contagious diseases like measles, polio, chickenpox, and whooping cough.
Some of these illnesses, like polio, can not only cause death, but lifelong respiratory paralysis.
Without this protection, she’s worried that some of these illnesses will spread through schools again, putting at-risk students, teachers, and community members in danger.
“I might not have grown up with the iron lung, but I'm so blessed that I didn't. I'm so blessed that I didn't have to worry about that or think about that because I was vaccinated,” said Wallace, referring to a medical device used to assist breathing in people with polio.
Fewer vaccines + more bugs = higher chronic absenteeism
Sheryl Posey is a school psychologist in the Orange County Schools district. She’s had some of the same scenarios run through her mind in the last 24 hours since the announcement was made about rolling back required vaccines for school kids.
“I'm not interested in having measles outbreaks, as well as polio coming back. It's just we already have multiple illnesses that keep our kids out of school, we don't need to add to that load,” said Posey.
Posey works with medically fragile students and students with disabilities who have a higher risk of getting deathly ill from some of these diseases.
She said the fear that COVID incited in these students and families was bad enough.
“For these kids, it can mean hospitalization. It can mean extremely high fevers. It can mean all kinds of things that would mean a host of difficulties for these families who are already challenged with having children who are a little bit more medically fragile than typical children. So that is my main concern, is we don't want to overburden these families who already have some challenges in getting their kids to school just because of the medical fragility,” said Posey.
Posey said any student could miss lots of school if they get one of the illnesses vaccines are meant to prevent against. Florida, and most other states across the country, already have a problem with chronic absenteeism since COVID. That’s when a child misses 10 or more days of school consecutively.
Chronic absenteeism caused by illness is one of the many predictors of poor academic and socio-emotional outcomes for children, said Posey.
A tipping point for Florida’s teachers
But it’s not just the kids that Edgewater High math teacher Ashley Modesto is worried about. It’s the teachers and other community members too.
During COVID, she said she got sick multiple times. Every time her family would get sick as well.
“I got COVID three times in the same school year. I can't say for certain that it was because of the students in my classroom, but what I do know is that I would have a student or maybe more than one test positive, and then a few days later, I would also be sick, and that's just one illness, and knowing that more could be coming down the road as years progress is terrifying,” said Modesto.
She said for a lot of teachers, a rollback of required vaccines in schools might just be the tipping point for them to leave the state or the profession, just as Florida has made significant strides in solving a statewide teacher shortage.
“And a lot of teachers, especially teachers who are immune-compromised, or they have a family member who's immune-compromised, they're not going to be willing to take that risk. We already deal with a pay issue, to imagine putting our life further on the line is just not, it's not something that we're going to be able to do,” said Modesto.
She says with this and the many other policy changes in Florida’s education system over the last few years, it’s hard to not to feel a little hopeless right now.
“It's so frustrating because at the end of the day, we just want to see our kids happy and healthy and educated and nothing else, and this is just another blow to what education in Florida has been dealing with,” said Modesto.
In a statement, Orange County Public Schools, where all three work, said, “we will adhere to all applicable laws and the latest guidelines from the State of Florida. As new state regulations are released, staff will promptly review and update the district’s health and safety protocols to ensure full compliance. Our priority is to maintain a safe, supportive learning environment for all students and families.”
Governor Ron DeSantis said he wants to roll back the vaccine mandates to protect parental choice and informed consent in the state, which he said was threatened by the advent of the COVID pandemic.
“We want informed consent, making sure we're protecting parents rights, and then also just being willing to challenge medical orthodoxy that's not supported by the data,” said DeSantis.
DeSantis said these are decisions all parents should be able to make for their children, not something that’s forced on them.
Some of the required school shots can be rolled back by Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. While others would need to be repealed by a vote of the Florida legislature. There are already some religious and medical exemptions for childhood vaccines in the state.
Watch the governor’s press conference here:
