COLUMBUS — Governor Mike DeWine has publicly rebuked school officials in Akron and Cincinnati for backtracking on commitments they’d made to offer in-person learning by March 1.
He says that’s unacceptable after the districts were among those prioritized for coronavirus vaccines because of their reopening promises.
“We know quite simply there is not enough vaccine. But we have prioritized vaccinating teachers in order to get students back in school, because too many are suffering academically and emotionally,” DeWine said in a statement Friday.
The Republican governor was upset to learn that Akron students weren’t slated to return until mid-March, and that Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills High School was sticking with remote learning over concerns about keeping students socially distanced.
“School districts should honor the voluntary commitment they made to their students, their teachers, and their communities,” he said.
DeWine says if they’re not getting kids back in classrooms, vaccinations should be redirected from educators to older populations at greater risk.
“The only reason we’re doing this is so you go back to school March 1, that’s kind of the deal, and we think it’s worth it. But, if you’re not going to go back, we need to take these vaccines and frankly put them to a group that is more vulnerable,” he told reporters at a Friday press conference.
House Minority Leader Emilia Strong Sykes and Sen. Vernon Sykes criticized DeWine for playing tough with local school districts when the state has struggled with delays due to the tight vaccine supply and its own record-keeping missteps.
“In a week where the DeWine administration failed to identify 4,000 COVID related deaths, the Governor takes to the news on a Friday evening to chastise school districts who have suffered under the continued mismanagement of the vaccination distribution process,” the father-and-daughter Akron Democrats said in a joint statement.
“We all want our kids back in school and our economy booming but we’ve been hindered by the failed leadership from the top that refuses to acknowledge where the real issues are, and instead places the blame on teachers, administrators and parents,” the statement said.
DeWine claims the 45% of Ohio students who were in fully remote schools in December has declined to 5.1% and the number of districts that are fully remote has dropped from 219 in the first week of January to only 31 this week.
The state reported Sunday that 1.28 million individuals had received their initial vaccine doses and 469,961 — or about 4.0% of the state’s total population — had received both shots.
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There have been 939,350 total COVID-19 cases in Ohio after 1,809 new cases were reported Sunday.
Only six additional deaths were reported as the state health department finished reconciling erroneous data from 2020. That brought the total number of Ohioans who have died from the coronavirus to 16,346.
There were 64 additional hospitalizations, bringing the number of Ohioans who have been admitted to hospitals since the pandemic began to 48,556. There were 1,657 patients in Ohio hospitals, occupying 6.1% of the state’s beds.
The seven-day positivity rate was 6% and the number of active cases statewide dropped to 63,783, the lowest number since Nov. 10.