Minnesota E-12 school leaders are taking action today on a statewide community COVID-19 vaccine program that will use nine pilot sites to deliver a limited number of COVID-19 vaccines to three key groups across Minnesota.
The three groups include people 65 years and older, E-12 school staff and childcare workers. The sites have yet to be identified, but the state plans to establish most of the sites in school buildings.
Recipients
About half of the limited supplies of vaccines will be for people 65 and older and the other half will go to educators and childcare workers. No walk ins will be allowed at the sites.
School district leaders will prioritize staff for this process with this state guidance. Examples of employees who would receive priority would be:
- If the staff member were in person vs. distance learning
- Age of employee
- Age of children employee works with
- Medical conditions of the employee
Each person who is prioritized as a candidate will automatically be signed up for the second shot in this process.
Key Steps to Take
After the prioritization is determined,
- School leaders will send an email to those employees for them to enter their information into this portal.
- Once staff member has been notified, each person must complete the COVID-19 Vaccine Form by 11:59 p.m. today (Monday, January 18).
- Staff members must take this action themselves because they must agree to share their information with MDE in order for the vendor to get the information they need to assist employees in scheduling appointments.
- If the employee agrees to input their information, then they will be given an appointment date.
Vaccines are expected to be administered as early as Thursday. The National Guard will be at the hosting sites to help with the process of vaccinating people.
Site Locations
The pilot sites will include seven locations in Greater Minnesota and two in the Twin Cities areas. These sites will be strategically spread in different counties throughout the state with most people not having to drive more than 1 hour and 40 minutes to receive the vaccine.
Piloting Process
This program is intended to be a trial run for when the state receives large batches of vaccines. All districts will receive the opportunity to have some of their high priority employees vaccinated, but the vaccine supplies are limited right now. School districts can look up how many appointment slots they have been allotted in this document.
School nurses are not part of this process as they already are part of the previous 1a vaccination process.
Districts should create multiple priority lists so that if employees choose to not participate then they can be ready to ask other employees to participate.
