Monday deadline for school employee vaccinations

Ninety-one percent of Shelton School District employees have received COVID vaccinations as the deadline for state’s mandate approaches on Monday.

That’s the figure Superintendent Wyeth Jessee announced Tuesday evening at the Shelton School Board meeting. Fifty-two employees have applied for medical or religious exemptions, and 32 of them have been accommodated through exemptions or plans to get vaccinated, he said.

Like all the other school districts in the state, the Shelton School District is obligated to follow Gov. Jay Inslee’s mandate for employees to be vaccinated, receive an exemption, or be fired.

The district’s primary goals are “low transmission rates and keeping our doors open,” Jessee said. Each school day, about 30 to 40 students are being quarantined, the superintendent said.

At Tuesday’s meeting conducted via Zoom, five residents expressed dismay that the district would let employees go while suffering from a shortage of teachers and bus drivers.

Two of the board members challenged the mandate. Sandy Tarzwell compared it to Nazism, and Marty Best called the climate “medical McCarthyism” and said the governor does not have the authority to create the mandate.

“Some people say (the mandate) is for the public good,” Tarzwell said. “I don’t necessarily believe that public good should triumph individual rights. The Germans used ‘public good’ to exterminate six million Jews.

“Like Marty said, we’re in a tough spot. No matter which way you go, you’re in a lot of trouble, with the other half of the people who feel the other way, but I’m still hopeful there’s an 11th hour solution that comes along that allows” more unvaccinated employees to keep their jobs,” she said.

Tarzwell said she wants “grace and space” for everyone.

Best challenged the governor’s authority to create a vaccination mandate.

“I’m having a challenge explaining to people that today, Oct. 12, a person can work here, but on Oct. 18 they can’t,” he said. “I’ve also shared, in my personal experiences in disasters, that chief elected officials cannot create laws under emergency management situations, they cannot create laws, they don’t have the authority, only the Legislature has that, the governor does not have the authority under RCW 3852 to mandate vaccines for adults, vaccines are only for children.”

Best said he understands the school board is a government entity tasked by the state Office of Public Instruction.

“We’re dealing with medical McCarthyism where the unvaccinated are treated as different subjects, lower-standard individuals, and I don’t know how to address that,” Best said. “The principals communicate to the staff that this shouldn’t be happening. I’ve lived through situations where people were treated unfairly because of their social class, their skin color or their ethnicity and I’m seeing a similar disturbing trend between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.”

Bordeaux Elementary paraeducator and substitute teacher Aimee Rowland is among the unvaccinated. She will find out today if she still has a job in the Shelton School District following a hearing.

In an interview with the Shelton-Mason County Journal, Rowland said she is a breast cancer survivor who is recovering from chemotherapy and radiation and taking medication for the next four years.

“I’m not going to put any more experimental drugs in my system,” she said.

Rowland, who has been the president of the school’s PTSO for five years, is seeking a religious exemption, but said she does not belong to a faith that discourages vaccinations.

“It’s for my own personal beliefs,” she said.

In her Oct. 5 letter to the superintendent and members of the school board, Rowland wrote, “I will let my natural immune system do its job. I am making that choice: I am not putting anyone else in danger. I have been strictly following the masking, sanitizing and social distancing guidelines.”

“I hope our district changes their mind and accepts accommodations,” Rowland told the Journal.

What does she expect at her hearing today?

“Nothing,” she said. “They’re going to say, ‘Sorry, you’re not going to have a job Oct. 18’ … Monday will be my last day of work unless they change their mind.”

In the North Mason School District, “We are following the guidance from OSPI as I am sure other districts are doing,” Superintendent Dana Rosenbach wrote to the Journal. “The exemption process requires an interactive process and decisions about granting exemptions responsive to that process and the specific circumstances of each application. In North Mason, we have granted just over 30 exemptions, medical as well as religious.”

On Monday, the state reported that almost 90% of Washington state employees have complied with Gov. Inslee’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate. Out of 62,000 state workers under the mandate, the state has approved more of the 4,800 religious or medical exemption requests.

On Tuesday, Boeing told its employees that with limited exemptions they must be vaccinated against COVID by Dec. 8 or face job termination.