Recently, it has been brought to my attention how many educators have been quitting or forced out of their jobs due to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. We just had a few teachers from the district I grew up in, in front of the Board to decide if they could keep their jobs. While I do know the importance and benefits of the vaccine, I think it is wrong to mandate it. Especially if it is only mandated for certain professionals. As a vaccinated educator myself, I can still understand how some people have beliefs against the vaccine, concerns for their health, doubts of the effectiveness and side effects, etc. Currently the teachers from District 186 are on an unpaid leave until the next board meeting which will decide if they are terminated. The district requires teachers to be fully vaccinated or abide by weekly COVID-19 testing, which I do think is a fair alternative option.
What I think is absurd is that a district can let something like a vaccine mandate push out veteran teachers when there is already such a large shortage of quality teachers. At the board meeting, people spoke on behalf of the teachers in question and noted that terminating them would be an injustice to the students. I know one of these teachers personally and know they are an outstanding and passionate educator. It is disappointing that these teachers are facing losing their jobs.
However, I do also understand the district’s standpoint. They are offering an alternative option of weekly testing for those who are unvaccinated. It is the most important to consider the health and safety of the students in this situation and unvaccinated people do put students at a higher risk of contracting COVD-19. It is also important to stand by your word and if they put this policy into place, it is hard to make exceptions for two teachers. The next board meetings are November 1st and 15th so I would like to discuss this with the class further once the official decision is made. Link: https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2021/10/19/two-springfield-district-186-teachers-could-eventually-face-termination/8503742002/
There are three different questions related to this problem, and our answers to these questions will shape how we respond to this situation.
First, there is the question of the legality of pubic health mandates. Can the state force people to either get vaccinated or receive weekly testing? The point of contention is whether the teachers are defying an illegal mandate—practicing civil disobedience against an illegal or unjust law, or whether they are defying a legal mandate that is both constitutional and legitimate.
Second, there is the question of the practical intention. The vaccination mandate is intended to the reduce the spread of a deadly virus. The alternative requirement, of regular testing, is also supposed to prevent the spread of the disease. There is also the practical consideration about whether it makes any sense, from a public health standpoint where we want policies that prevent the spread of the virus, to only test employees who are unvaccinated. After all, breakthrough cases are common enough, and we know the disease can still be spread by vaccinated persons, so if the policies are ineffective, do the teachers have a right to refuse to comply because the vaccines are ineffective or the testing regime will not actually prevent the spread of COVID in the schools?
Third, there is the question of morality. A teacher can be dismissed for gross misconduct and immorality. For example, if a teacher was endangering the lives of students, they might be terminated immediately. If they were convicted of certain crimes outside of their workplace and working hours (crimes involving harming children, for example), they might also be dismissed. Is a refusal to get vaccinated a sign of a moral perversity in these teachers that makes them unqualified to teach?
A point to consider is the quality of the teachers. If the teachers were low quality educators, this might influence our thinking. As it is, these teachers are exceptionally good teachers, and this is a point that many people consider as they are weighing the issue of what should be done.
Another point to consider is whether the policy for disciplining teachers who refuse to comply could be handled in a creative way. If the vaccine mandate is valid, legal, and constitutional; and if forcing teachers to be vaccinated or tested regularly would dramatically reduce the spread of the virus; and if the teachers are behaving unethically in a way that threatens the lives of their students, then it might be the case that the school district would be justified in terminating the teachers, but that would not mean it was necessarily the best thing to do. Perhaps such teachers could be given a retainer and dismissed from all duties that required their presence in a school building, but given a guarantee of an opportunity to return to employment once certain public health indicators suggested it was safe again for unvaccinated staff to work with students. Perhaps they could be assigned as online tutors to students during times that students could not come to school campuses.
My understanding of the law is that the vaccine requirements are justified, legal, and constitutional. The argument that the governor cannot act during a public health emergency to require vaccinations is wrong. Vaccine mandates for persons in occupations that bring them into regular contact with the public are substantiated by good legal argument and precedent (look up "Mary Mallon”), and anyway, the school board has the power to decide whether to terminate teachers, and if the school board says they will terminate teachers who do not get vaccinated and refuse regular testing, then they can do that. My understanding of the public health point is that the vaccines will reduce the spreading significantly, and that will protect the health and lives of students and student family members. The testing regime is indeed not optimally set up. As people who are vaccinated can contract the virus and briefly spread the disease (not as much as unvaccinated persons, but still, they can spread it), it should be practice to test everyone. Also, as virus incubates in people so that they only become infectious 3-6 days after exposure, and only show signs of illness 5-10 days after exposure, and only get enough antibody concentrations to test positively 3-5 days after exposure, weekly testing is insufficient to catch asymptomatic persons who are shedding the virus (are infectious). So, while the teachers are wrong to refuse to be tested, they are correct to criticize a system that would only test them (and not vaccinated staff), and only test them once a week (rather than Monday-Wednesday-Friday or perhaps Tuesday-Thursday).
As to the morality of the teachers, here we have an issue where probability comes into calculation. A person who drives home from a party while intoxicated, and arrives home safely without harming anyone, is guilty of a rather trivial offense. Everyone agrees that they ought to be fined, or forced to take classes, or suffer restrictions on their driving privileges, but few people think such persons should spend years in prison. Yet persons making the same moral choices might get unlucky, and crash into a car or a group of people crossing a street, and cause the deaths of several people. When that happens, people will be enraged, and demand that the drunk driver who killed people should be charged with reckless homicide or manslaughter, and the punishment should be severe, with several years spent incarcerated. Yet, in either case, the person making the moral decision to drive home while intoxicated is making the same moral judgment. There was a risk that innocent persons would be killed.
In another situation, an officer who gives approval for a bombing of a group of people or a home in Afghanistan or Iraq because of information suggesting that Taliban or ISIS leadership is in the group or home probably knows that there is some chance that innocent bystanders will be killed, or that the information was faulty and only innocent people are in the home or in the group. The decision to allow the bombing might cause deaths of innocents, but the officer hopes it will not, and decides the risks of causing such deaths outweighs the benefits of possibly killing murderous enemy combatants.
Getting home from a party or achieving a military objective seem to justify, to some people, the risk that they will inflict great harm or death to innocent people. This is a similar moral situation to a person who refuses to get a vaccine and refuses to get tested. There is some chance, perhaps poorly understood, that they will pass the disease on to children or colleagues, and those children and colleagues will continue the spread of the disease, and possibly someone down the line will die of COVID-19. The risk seems remote, and may be it is one of those risks that is fairly trivial, like the risk we will have a traffic accident and harm someone while driving sober; but perhaps it is more like the risk of deciding to drive home from a party while intoxicated. The state certainly has a moral responsibility to outlaw or restrict some of the very risky behaviors, but the state cannot and should not eliminate all risk.
There is nearly a consensus among well-informed experts about contagion of air-borne viruses, experts on the SARS-CoV-2, on COVID-19, and persons who study vaccinations, that the risk is high enough, and the effectiveness evidence is strong enough, to justify the the state’s actions. The governor and school board is acting within reason to demand state employees who have regular contact with the public, especially indoors, should be vaccinated. Those teachers are wrong. I note also that they are not union members, yet a union represents them and bargains for their wages and working conditions. Noting that they are comfortable being freeloaders diminishes my sympathy for them, and raises suspicions that they are unethical persons, no matter how good they in their profession. I do think the authorities would be wise to not dismiss those excellent teachers, and find some other way to allow them to continue to educate students, but forbidding them from frequenting the schools while they remain unvaccinated and refuse to be regularly tested seems the ethical course of action, since failing to do that would expose children, other teachers, and families to a higher risk of a dangerous disease, and potentially death.
This ought to be a calm and dispassionate discussion and decision. The fact that people are feeling so passionately about the issue indicates to me that their identities are on the line. People construct their sense-of-self, and if they construct this personality around ideals of fair-mindedness, they would not become so enraged at the teachers or at the school board. Just as a toddler who throws a tantrum at a trivial slight is probably really crying about deeper issues of frustration and desperation, these people attacking the school board (or attacking the teachers) are likely to be manifesting deeper fears and trauma, perhaps hidden from their own self-awareness. They are upset about some sort of injustice in the world or in their lives, and they fear some attack on their personhood or their dignity, and so they cannot think clearly about the issue, and overwhelming feelings of anger and hostility boil to the surface and they use hate-filled rhetoric to attack the board or the teachers. Social workers need to be better than that, and be aware of their feelings, biases, prejudices, and values, and those hidden aspects of their personalities may shape their opinions on controversial subjects such as this.
