That number works out to one out of every eight teachers, although the teachers union claimed on Thursday that only about 8,000 teachers had not had their jabs.
Thousands of health-care workers have also failed to get their first jabs, posing potential shortages….but Gov. Kathy Hochul seems to have got that covered.
New York Post reports: Surely these people can’t all be seeking religious or medical exemptions. (A teachers union source tells The Post that only a small number of requests for accommodations are being granted, in any event.)
(By the way: Does anyone really think New York City teachers and health-care workers are “deplorable” right-wingers and Trump supporters who, according to the left, make up most of the nation’s anti-vax holdouts? Ha!)
The teachers union likes to claim that its members put kids first. And, yes, many do. Yet since the start of the pandemic, the union has fought for closed schools and remote learning, which was unnecessary and hurt kids. It even sued to try to stop the city’s vax mandate — and many teachers seem to be resisting, threatening staffing shortages if unvaxxed teachers aren’t allowed to teach.
On Thursday, the teachers and principals unions called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to push off Monday’s deadline for teachers to be vaxxed. The unions aren’t putting students first — but last.
De Blasio pooh-poohed the idea that unvaxxed teachers will spark a shortage: “We are not seeing something that would have a profound impact on the teaching corps numbers for next Monday,” he said. DOE has hired 5,200 new teachers who can fill the gap.
Monday may well be a mess; the school-security-officers’ union (whose members may only be 40 percent vaxxed) is also warning of disaster, and far be it for us to assume Team de Blasio truly has its ducks in a row. But the chaos will be at least as much on the unions that didn’t get their people jabbed as on the mayor who gave them ample warning.
