New York City school staffers will stand guard at their buildings Monday with a list of colleagues banned from entering due to defiance of the COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
Some 15,000 Department of Education employees, including about 5,500 teachers, refused to get vaccinated by Friday. The final number of those branded “non-compliant” is to be released Monday.
Meanwhile, the DOE instructed principals to prepare a list of exiled staffers marked “no entry permitted.”
“If they don’t have a vaccination card, they can’t come in the building,” a Brooklyn principal said.
Any resistance should be met firmly, the DOE says: “In the event of an escalation, and as a last resort, principals may ask for support from the (school safety agent) assigned to the building that day.”
The DOE says it has thousands of vaccinated subs ready to step in Monday.
“They’re saying there’s plenty. They’re smoking crack,” said the Brooklyn administrator. “I think it will be an all-around s–tshow.”
If workers get jabbed during the weekend, they can still come to work and be “put back on active status,” the DOE said Friday.
Unvaccinated Michael Kane, a leader of the Teachers for Choice coalition, said he plans to show up at his Queens school regardless.
“I’m not resigning. I’m not quitting. You’re refusing to let me in,” he said.
The coalition also plans a protest march Monday from DOE offices in Brooklyn to City Hall.
Kane’s request for a religious exemption to vaccination was denied, but his appeal has yet to be decided. Kane and others have sued the city saying their religious beliefs preclude them from getting vaccinated. They expect to seek a restraining order Monday in federal court.
Another legal challenge to the mandate collapsed Friday when Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected a last-minute bid by four teachers to stop it.
The DOE has granted “roughly 500” medical and religious exemptions — while 3,000 teachers requested them, according to teachers’ union president Michael Mulgrew.
But hundreds have appealed the denials, and are entitled to hearings by outside arbitrators. The DOE is so inundated with appeals it has extended the process until Oct. 22, teachers told The Post. They will still be barred from schools, but remain on the city payroll pending final decisions.
The DOE would not not say how many appeals are pending.
Forest Hills High School teachers have been given the chance to teach an extra class if they wanted it, according to Adam Bergstein, the school’s union chapter leader. He advised them to turn it down.
“The classes that people are being offered only exist for one reason, to replace our friends, our colleagues, who are forsaking their job, giving up their careers, leaving behind this profession. It’s just wrong on so many levels,” he said in a missive to colleagues.
The DOE said it has 9,000 vaccinated substitutes, 5,000 substitute paraprofessionals and “qualified” central staff ready to fill the vacancies.
“They’re saying there’s plenty. They’re smoking crack.”
Brooklyn administrator
But Mark Cannizzaro, president of the principals’ union, warned of a systemwide shortage Friday, especially of safety agents and paraprofessionals. “There are still too many school leaders that have been unable to find qualified substitutes for Monday,” he said.
About 970 school safety agents — 20 percent of the city’s 4,848 force — remained unvaccinated as of Saturday morning, the NYPD said. As a result, the number of guards at some schools may be reduced.
Nicole Broecker, an English as a second language instructor at Susan Wagner High School on Staten Island, is among those who won’t be in the classroom Monday, saying she was too worried about the vaccine’s side effects to get the jab.
“For me, I feel this is a risk that I’m not willing to take yet,” said Broecker, 34, adding that she had antibodies from an asymptomatic COVID-19 infection last year.
Broecker said she bid a tearful good-bye to her students Thursday and was too emotional to go to work Friday.
“It’s hard for them. I just don’t think that everybody’s seeing the bigger picture right now,” she said. “When this happens next week, the students are really going to be affected.”
Teachers who did not get vaccinated can have a year of unpaid leave with health insurance or depart the DOE with severance.
The looming vaccine mandate — and the requirement that took effect Monday that healthcare workers statewide be immunized — may have pushed thousands more New Yorkers to get the jab this week.
On Tuesday, the state said it had given out 64,292 vaccine doses in the prior 24 hours — up from 45,701 the day before.
At SUNY Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn, 106 workers were facing disciplinary action as of Friday for not complying with the mandate — a number that was down from 172 a few days earlier, a spokeswoman said.
The employment status of another 116 workers was in flux as the hospital sorted through their vaccination status.
“We anticipate that more employees will come into compliance,” said spokeswoman Dawn Skeete-Walker.
The hospital was able to resume offering a full slate of services by the end of the week after initially delaying outpatient radiology appointments and canceling elective C-sections and birth inductions in anticipation of a staffing shortage.
Gov. Kathy Hochul was ready to call in National Guard medics to fill in staffing gaps at hospitals and nursing homes, but that had not been necessary, a Department of Health spokeswoman said Friday.
