Colorado Politics

DPS ‘on track’ to vaccinate educators who want it by end of March

Denver Public Schools is on track to vaccinate all of its educators who want the vaccine by the end of March, a spokeswoman said Tuesday, hitting the district’s internal timeline.

But it will still be short of Gov. Jared Polis’ stated goal of having all willing educators be vaccinated by the end of February. Initially, DPS was expecting to be able to vaccinate roughly 1,000 staffers per week; for a district that needed to vaccinate several thousand personnel, an end-of-February timeline appeared tight.

The thousand-a-week quota may increase if supply increases, said Winna Maclaren, a spokeswoman for DPS. She said she couldn’t say how many educators had been vaccinated because that information was protected by the provider distributing the vaccines for the district and that the district itself wasn’t tracking those numbers.

Of the roughly 12,000 respondents to a district survey, more than 8,800 educators here said they’d be receiving the vaccine. Twelve hundred more said they’d already been vaccinated. Roughly 1,200 said maybe, and 559 said they wouldn’t be receiving the vaccine.

The district is not requiring staff to be vaccinated, Maclaren previously told the Gazette.

DPS students and staff who chose to be work in the classroom this year are back in buildings, after the district’s phased return plan kicked in. 

Katrina Wells, left, chats with Sheri Barnes, the medical office director, at the Kaiser Permanente clinic in Loveland, Colorado while organizing vials of the COVID-19 vaccine Feb. 13, 2021. The Kaiser clinics around the state were holding an educator-focused vaccine drive, with hopes to vaccinate thousands of teachers over the course of the weekend. (Forrest Czarnecki/The Gazette)
Forrest Czarnecki
Katrina Wells, right, a medical assistant at Kaiser Permanente, gives a COVID-19 vaccine to Janet Pattison, left, at the Kaiser clinic in Loveland, Colorado Feb. 13, 2021. The Kaiser clinics around the state were holding an educator-focused vaccine drive, with hopes to vaccinate thousands of teachers over the course of the weekend. v
(Gazette file photo)
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