LVUSD vaccine site draws enthusiastic response

Local teachers inoculated



BRIGHTER DAY—Above left, teachers and staff wait in line to receive their first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine during a March 6 clinic at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas. Above, pharmacy technician Leslie Loitz fills a syringe with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

BRIGHTER DAY—Above left, teachers and staff wait in line to receive their first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine during a March 6 clinic at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas. Above, pharmacy technician Leslie Loitz fills a syringe with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

Teachers in the Las Virgenes Unified School District won’t be fully vaccinated before they resume in-person learning, but at least they’re halfway there.

The local school district hosted a clinic for about 1,000 educators and other eligible residents to receive their first dose of the Moderna vaccine on March 6 at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas.

The atmosphere at the Las Virgenes Road campus was jubilant. Dozens of people waited patiently in line for their turn to get the shot. Music played, and co-workers who hadn’t seen each other in months traded jokes in the observation area where they waited for 15 minutes after receiving the first dose of the vaccine.

The event was a partnership between LVUSD and Albertsons Pharmacy. The move comes amid a broader effort to reopen schools across the state. About 200,000 vaccine doses were put into the arms of California educators last week, far surpassing the state’s goal of 75,000 shots per week.

“Watching this . . . it’s very emotional,” Superintendent Dan Stepenosky said. “You feel like you’re doing your part to push back on this global pandemic. We’ve worked on this for weeks, and to see it come together makes me want to cry. We were ready to do this in mid-January, but getting the vaccine is the hard part.”

Photos by MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

Photos by MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

Teachers said they were glad to have received the vaccine and feel a weight had been lifted off their shoulders.

Alice O’Kieffe, who works with special needs students at Agoura High School, said she and her colleagues had been anxious about having to wait. In California, teachers weren’t eligible for the shot until March 1 when Gov. Gavin Newsom began allotting 10% of the state’s doses to educators.

O’Kieffe has been back on campus since last fall when special needs students struggling through distance learning were allowed to return to the classroom.

“I’m still relatively young and I wear a mask. The school has been so good about providing (personal protective equipment) that I almost feel safer at school than I do just going out. They’re taking good care of us,” O’Kieffe said. “My husband and I did a lot of reading about the vaccine and decided getting the shot is the best idea.”

BETTER, NOW—Andrew Exner, 6, left, comforts his mom, Calabasas High Principal Sara Exner, as she receives the COVID-19 vaccine from pharmacy technician Michele Miller during a clinic for LVUSD educators and workers March 6 at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas. MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

BETTER, NOW—Andrew Exner, 6, left, comforts his mom, Calabasas High Principal Sara Exner, as she receives the COVID-19 vaccine from pharmacy technician Michele Miller during a clinic for LVUSD educators and workers March 6 at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas. MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

The district is planning to host another vaccine clinic for the second dose on April 3.

LVUSD recently announced plans to bring middle and high school students back to campus on March 22.

Los Angeles County Public Health announced Tuesday that the county “has begun to meet the metric” for the less restrictive red tier that allows for additional business reopenings and in-class learning for grades 7-12. To move into the red tier, the county’s virus case rate must be at or below 7 new cases per 100,000 and its test positivity rate must be at or below 8%, and remain there for two consecutive weeks. The current case rate is 5.2 and positivity is 2.5%, stunningly low numbers considering the dark days of January.

Stepenosky said nearly all of the district’s high school and middle school students want to come back to campus. But with health restrictions in place, the district will have to break the students into multiple attendance cohorts in order to meet safety guidelines.

Scheduling for secondary school students is more challenging than elementary because the students move more frequently between rooms and classes.

Craig Hochhaus, the head of the Las Virgenes teachers union, said some educators remain concerned for their health.

“When a teacher works with a group of kids, those kids then leave and go to a different teacher and sit with a different group of kids. It’s not tightened down like it is in elementary school,” Hochhaus said. “There are people who are still fearful, but elementary (staff) was fearful when they came back too.”

LVUSD’s middle and high school system will bring one cohort onto campus for two periods in the morning, while two other groups will tune in to digital classes in the afternoon. The cohorts will then rotate.

Some parents have been pushing the district since last fall to disregard state and county guidelines and reopen campuses. In any case, with about a week to go until the reopening, LVUSD will become the first district in Los Angeles County to resume in-person learning for all students.