I received a great question yesterday on the 2nd Vaccination Clinic for our staff and I want to clarify the process:
Question:
“Can I ask why the district didn’t wait until administering the second dose on a Friday?”
Each county in Illinois handled how they dispersed the vaccination to group 1b, which was completely out of the district’s control. Our announcement to receive the 1st dose of the vaccination was not communicated in advance and caught me completely off guard. As soon as I received the information on the first available vaccination clinic in Whiteside County, I sent the information onto our staff. I know this opportunity came as a complete surprise to them as well. We were fortunate to get 54 staff members on the first available vaccine clinic on MLK Jr. Day. Thankfully, a majority of our staff members did not experience negative side effects after the first dose. After I was debriefed on the side effects of the 2nd dose, I did try to move the 2nd vaccination clinic to a Friday afternoon, but was denied.
With all of that being said, I have been very impressed with our health department and what they have been able to accomplish. A lot of this is out of their control as well and is dictated by their supplies and shipments of the vaccinations. They establish dates when they receive supplies and have to be firm on them. Of course, there are also refrigeration guidelines and timelines they have to follow with the 1st and 2nd doses.
If I had any control over the organization of the vaccination clinic, I would have changed how we received it, however, that is not the case. We are all disappointed in missing an instructional day. My hope is that all staff feel great after the 2nd dose and can come to school on that Tuesday for collaboration and planning for our students. However, with the data that I have at this time, it is likely that we will have some people not feeling well and I did not know how to plan for the unpredictability of this situation.
This was a great question and I assume others had the same question so I thought it appropriate to respond to all.