All NYC Schools With Students 12+ Will Host COVID Vaccine Sites

NEW YORK CITY — The city's "#VaxToSchool" effort is poised to live up to its name.

All New York City public schools with students 12 and up will host a coronavirus vaccine site the first week of school, Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter announced Wednesday.

Porter made the announcement during a City Council hearing about schools' pending reopening Sept. 13 — a day when all students will be back in classrooms for the first time since the pandemic struck.

Likewise, Mayor Bill de Blasio also announced new mobile vaccine sites will be set up in each borough with the aim to ensure all public school staff comply with a citywide mandate to get at least one dose before Sept. 27.

"[These] will make it easier for them to get vaccinated," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday. "This is what’s going to keep us safe."

(Patch has asked the mayor's office for an address for the Queens site.)

De Blasio and education officials have made an intense push to vaccinate the city's eligible students, some of whom are returning to the classroom for the first time since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

Vaccinating kids is the best protection against the coronavirus and its highly contagious delta variant, they argue.

The effort appears off to a good start — on Wednesday, de Blasio said 325,000 kids ages 12 to 17 have been vaccinated so far.

The pop-up sites for students will be open every day the first week of school other than Sept. 16, when buildings will be closed to observe Yom Kippur, officials said. Children ages 12 and up are eligible to receive the two-dose Pfizer vaccine.

The vaccine sites for teachers come a little over a week after de Blasio first announced that roughly 148,000 teachers, principals and other public schools staff would be required to get vaccinated to return to school.

The mandate has received some push back from labor unions, who have challenged the city's legal authority to put the requirement in place without bargaining with the organization.

Beyond vaccinations, school officials recently unveiled safety guidelines for students.

Students who are vaccinated will be able to stay in their classroom even if a coronavirus case is detected in their classroom under new safety guidelines for the 2021-22 school year, given that they are asymptomatic. Unvaccinated students will quarantine at home and can "test back in" to class with a negative test after the seventh day.

In elementary schools, where children are not old enough to get the shot, the entire classroom will quarantine should a positive case be detected.

Read More:

• NYC School Reopening: COVID Quarantine, Testing Rules Unveiled
• Union Leaders Buck NYC School COVID Vaccine Mandate
• NYC Teachers Must Be Vaccinated Against COVID, De Blasio Says