Ten percent of available vaccines will be reserved for teachers and other school staff beginning this month as part of Phase 1B of California’s vaccination rollout, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Feb. 19. Teachers have been prioritized for early vaccinations in an effort to reopen schools and resume in-person teaching as soon as possible. 

The impact has already been significant for Pali. 

Forty-one percent of Pali teachers have received their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and eight percent have received both doses as of March 12, according to a Pali United Teachers Los Angeles (P-UTLA) survey. 

Teachers can schedule appointments through the state vaccine website using a special code identifying them as eligible educators. The codes are doled out by the state to county education offices, which then allot them among local districts and child-care centers for delivery to school staff.

Pali English teacher and P-UTLA co-chair Stephen Klima received a code from a colleague, which allowed him to schedule appointments for both doses of the Pfizer vaccine. 

“My experience was pretty good,” he said. “It was run by FEMA and the National Guard and it was at Cal State L.A.… I was in the car the whole time.” 

Fellow Pali English teacher Holly Korbonski’s route to the vaccine was less conventional.

“I had a couple of chances to get the shot through not entirely ethical channels,” Korbonski said. “Friends were going to get me in and I was tempted, but I didn’t like the idea that I was going to get someone else’s vaccine. That didn’t feel like good karma at all.”

She continued: “One of my students reached out and said her dad was a doctor with Los Angeles County and they had some extra vaccines… There was a link attached and I got an appointment the next day.”

Korbonski said she wishes the state vaccination process for teachers was more organized.

“I would really like to see more direct action,” Korbonski added. “I think if they want us to go back to work it would be nice to see that focus.”

According to the P-UTLA survey, 86 percent of Pali teachers who have not already been vaccinated say they plan to receive it when it’s available. 

Klima said that he and the negotiating team have been meeting with administration to create a contract that will outline terms for Pali’s reopening. 

“A lot of teachers would do anything to be able to go back to how things were last year in February,” he said. 

“When it’s safe to return, I think teachers will be more than willing to go back and excited to go back to how things used to be.”