AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Public Health (APH) is hoping to vaccinate more school staff and child care providers with a focused "School Saturdays" initiative.
APH Director Stephanie Hayden-Howard said that since January, the department has been providing vaccines to school staff and child care workers that meet the Phase 1A and 1B criteria. But now that the federal and State government have put an emphasis on vaccinating educators and child care providers, APH is hoping to increase those efforts.
"Our plan is to roll out the School Saturdays, effective this Saturday [March 6], where we will be working with school staff as well as child care providers. And our goal is, is to be able to provide as many vaccines as we can on most Saturdays to folks," Hayden-Howard said. "We have already started that process by looking at the folks that are already signed up on our system. We have over 10,000 folks that have already signed up on our platform, and so we'll be working with them."
Hayden-Howard also said that APH has a "schools team" that has been established throughout this process that will be reaching out to their contacts in schools to alert them about School Saturdays in order to reach people who may not have access to the internet or other resources. She said APH hopes to work collaboratively with school districts and child care providers to vaccine people in those industries.
Hayden-Howard also said that she hopes other vaccine providers join the School Saturdays initiative as well – something echoed by Dr. Mark Escott, Austin-Travis County's interim health authority.
"We're hopeful that other vaccine providers will join us on this School Saturday – H-E-B, CVS, Walgreens, other partners – to ensure that we can get our educators, our school staff, our child care staff vaccinated soon," Escott said. "President Biden asks that every one of them receive a vaccine, at least one dose by the end of this month. We're hopeful that we can get that done, but APH can't do it alone. And that partnership will be helpful to get us there."
Escott added that getting these individuals vaccinated will put Central Texas on the path to getting the school experience back to normal for the area's students.
"Our children, my children have been challenged by this school year, which has been unlike any other that they've experienced or that we've experienced. And the better we can protect schools and child care, the more likely it is that that we can start to return schools to normal," Escott said. "Unfortunately, I don't think that will be this semester, but it gives us great hope that things like summer school and in the fall semester can be more normal if we can get that taken care of."
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