San Francisco will begin vaccinating teachers and other educators when it moves into Phase 1B, Tier 1 of California's vaccine distribution plan on Feb. 24, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at an unusually emotional COVID-19 briefing Tuesday.
Phase 1B also includes child care workers, emergency service workers and agricultural workers. But Breed's comments focused chiefly on the ongoing legal tussle between the city and the San Francisco Unified School District over in-person instruction. The city is suing SFUSD and the San Francisco Board of Education over the failure to reopen schools for in-person instruction. The city's roughly 55,000 public school students have been learning remotely since the pandemic shut down classrooms last March.
"It isn't easy to go back-and-forth and be at odds with each other at a critical time," Breed said. She recalled a recent press event with children who wanted to go back to school, and "not one kid smiled. Not one kid laughed."
Children, she said, "are broken."
About 115,000 people who live or work in San Francisco will be able to apply for vaccination under Phase 1B. About 210,000 health care workers and people 65 and older are currently eligible.
When asked if the city would prioritize vaccinating educators, given the lawsuit and the deal between the union and school district stipulating teachers must be offered shots before returning unless cases declined significantly, San Francisco Director of Health Grant Colfax said, "Our public health guidance is that schools can reopen without educators being vaccinated."
Another concern, Colfax said, is supply.
The state is shipping San Francisco between 10,000-11,000 vaccine doses per week, when the city's new high-volume sites have the capacity to administer 10,000 vaccines each day.
"We hope the supply increases, we hope it increases dramatically, so we can vaccinate those 1B essential workers," Colfax said.