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The National Education Association – the country’s largest teachers union – endorsed COVID-19 vaccination and testing mandates for its members Thursday, even as 90% of them have already gotten the jab.
"We also support regular COVID-19 testing in lieu of vaccination for those not yet vaccinated or those for whom vaccination is not medically appropriate or effective. We believe that such vaccine requirements and accommodations are an appropriate, responsible, and necessary step to ensure the safety of our school communities and to protect our students," the union said in a statement.
"No one wants to be back in the classroom with their students more than educators, and student safety is our number one priority," the union’s president, Becky Pringle, said in a statement she shared to Twitter. "NEA has said from the beginning that we need to follow the science, and evidence shows that COVID-19 vaccines, combined with other safety measures, are the most powerful weapon we have against the pandemic."
She said the delta variant and "lagging public vaccination rates" were cause for concern.
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"Educators must have a voice in how vaccine requirements are implemented to ensure that students and educators are able to enjoy safe, uninterrupted, in-person education," Pringle said.
But with nine in 10 union members already vaccinated, mandates would effectively take away the voice of those few holdouts who have not taken the injections.
President Joe Biden speaks with National Education Association President Becky Pringle at the NEA's annual meeting at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, Friday, July 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Smaller teachers unions around the country have taken a different stance – and members have questioned the wisdom of encouraging unions to ask the government to impose restrictions on their own members.
The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest union behind the NEA, has not endorsed vaccine mandates for its members but softened its resistance in a new resolution.
"We believe that workplace policies should be done with working people, not to them," that group’s president, Randi Weingarten, told The Hill on Thursday.
New York State United Teachers stated last week that it would not support a vaccine mandate.
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"We have advocated since the beginning of the year that any educator who wants a vaccine should have easy access to one," the union said in a statement on Aug. 2. "We would support local efforts to encourage more vaccinations, such as through programs that require that those who are not vaccinated get tested on a regular basis. But it’s critical that districts come up with plans to make testing available on-site and at no cost. What we have not supported is a vaccine mandate."
Chief White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, voiced support for teacher vaccine mandates earlier this week in a televised interview on MSNBC. However, he said such a call would not come from the federal government.
