This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.
This article was written by WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com and republished with permission. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.
A group of employees is calling on the school board to end its vaccine-or-test requirements for Prince William County Schools, and at least one board member is hoping the division will reverse course.
At Wednesday night’s school board meeting, a number of school employees came to speak about the requirements for all unvaccinated division staffers to be subject to weekly COVID-19 testing, which they called coercive.
District leadership has said that over 90% of the division’s roughly 11,400 employees have been fully vaccinated and submitted their vaccination information to headquarters. But employees speaking Wednesday night said it wasn’t fair that they be required to endure additional testing because they’ve refused to get vaccinated. The policy was voted on by the school board in the fall and went into effect Jan. 24.
“We ask you: if the students are the top priority, why would you threaten to remove their teachers amidst a critical year of recovery?” Cyndi Kilmer, a Gainesville High School social studies teacher said at the school board meeting. “If you value your staff and their roles, why would you attempt to enforce a policy that discriminates against and violates the privacy of those who have given so much to make in-person school possible?”
Kilmer and others also said that if the vaccinated and unvaccinated can both contract and spread COVID, it didn’t make sense to subject them to extra testing.
Data from the Virginia Health Department and other health agencies show that while both vaccinated and unvaccinated can contract and spread COVID, unvaccinated people are far more likely to do both. During the recent record-breaking Omicron surge, unvaccinated people continued to make up the bulk of COVID cases in Virginia. They were also far more likely to land in the hospital with a severe case of COVID or die from it.
Caly Bruton, another Gainesville teacher, said that division staff had been “rude” and “evasive” in enforcing the mandatory testing, though she did mention the possibility of exemptions for some. She also said that staff didn’t trust the contractor that runs testing.
“The [division’s] frequently asked questions also state that we’ll be tested by professionals, however, job postings on Facebook and other sites say ‘Job opportunity in Prince William County, we need to hire staff to conduct COVID testing.’ … Now we’re hiring anyone off the street?”
At least one teacher has already been suspended for refusing to submit to weekly testing. A special education teacher named Kelsey Simms wrote on a popular anti-mask parents Facebook group that she would refuse testing.
“I WILL NOT TAKE ANOTHER PWCS COVID-19 TEST AGAIN,” she wrote on PWC For Mask Choice. “I complied this week because I thought that was what was best for my students. Just like them I am an American citizen and have freedoms that cannot be taken away.”
Simms told PotomacLocal that she had been suspended without pay.
School Boardmember Jennifer Wall, who represents the Gainesville District, said she’s working on a resolution that would reverse the testing mandate, something two county supervisors who are also running for Congress – Republicans Jeanine Lawson and Yesi Vega – came to Wednesday’s meeting to support.
It’s unclear whether Wall’s resolution would gain majority of support from the board, but Chair Babur Lateef signaled that he would likely support the reversal in policy just weeks after the division saw a record number of students and staff contract COVID-19 during the Omicron surge.
Wall did not respond to request for comment from InsideNoVa.
“As I have said all along throughout the pandemic, every policy has a cost. There is always a balance of benefits and harms, I’ve talked about this numerous times,” she said Wednesday. “… We have got to do a better job of balancing the benefits and the harms.”
