UMATILLA COUNTY — Michelle Hoeft found the moment to be a little anticlimactic.

Hoeft and Dawndi Johnson, secretaries with the Pilot Rock School District, had arrived at the Thursday, Jan. 28, COVID-19 vaccination drive at the Pendleton Convention Center around 6 a.m., two hours before the event was scheduled to start, so they could finish up early and get back to work.

For Hoeft, the needle prick that will eventually bring an end to the pandemic was nearly painless and over before she knew it.

“It wasn’t even as bad as a bee sting,” she said. “The flu shot was worse.”

The state had made vaccines available to teachers and other school staff just a few days earlier, and they answered the call when Umatilla County Public Health held its first vaccination drive for eastern county educators in Pendleton. Within the first hour of the event, about 100 cars wound through the convention center parking lot.

Kati Funderburk, a teacher at Weston Middle School, has tried to be careful during the pandemic as she goes through a surrogate pregnancy.

Waiting in her car during the requisite 15-minute, post-vaccination waiting period, Funderburk said the Athena-Weston School District is expanding its in-person schedule next week. Although she’s excited to get her first dose, she said she would have continued to teach in-person regardless of her vaccination. 

Vaccinations proceeded quickly despite the long lines, and Umatilla County Public Health Director Joe Fiumara anticipated administering 100 doses per hour if the traffic held up.

The health department repeated the same process in the Hermiston High School parking lot the next day, where public health staff offered the vaccine to school staff in the western part of the county.

Bri Silva, operations manager for Little Tots Daycare & Preschool in Hermiston, was taking selfies while she waited in her vehicle in the school parking lot, barely able to contain her excitement.

“I’m so stoked,” she said.

Silva said she was getting the vaccine to protect not only herself but her co-workers, the children she cares for and the families they go home to — many of whom aren’t eligible to receive the vaccine themselves yet. If the day care requires children to be vaccinated against childhood illnesses, such as measles, to attend, Silva said, it’s only fair that she does her part to get the vaccine for which she qualifies.

“It’s not political,” she said. “We’re not being Republicans or Democrats, we’re just being healthy.”

Cori Applegate, a Hermiston teacher, admitted as she waited in line that she was a little nervous about receiving a vaccine, but afterward, as she waited in her car for the all-clear to go home, she gave a thumbs up and said she was feeling good.

“It’s going much smoother than I expected,” she said of the clinic.

Caught up in contention

The series of vaccination drives is a watershed moment for schools, many of which were forced to teach most of their students online as the virus spread quickly throughout the county.

But the process has been mired in controversy as Gov. Kate Brown prioritized teachers over seniors for the vaccine in an attempt to accelerate the school reopening schedule.

Not everyone who showed up at the clinic was allowed one of the approximately 450 vaccine doses available. Several people peeled away from the main line after speaking with a screener and being told the event was only for educators and people in the Phase 1a category.

“I’m 84 and have diabetes, but I don’t qualify,” Sam Nobles said.

If the state fulfills the county’s follow-up request for more doses of the vaccine, Fiumara anticipates the health department will be able to vaccinate all the teachers who requested the vaccine, about half of the county’s school staff, very soon.

But with many local schools expanding their in-person offerings within the next week or two, most teachers will return to the classroom without having received the vaccine’s second dose, which fully inoculates recipients against the virus.

Given the ups and downs of the vaccine prioritization process, the heads of the county’s two largest teachers’ unions had mixed feelings.

“Nobody wants to get back to the classroom more than educators, but any return to school needs to be done safely and equitably,” Pendleton Association of Teachers President Katie Bodewig said in a statement.

“Complete vaccination, meaning both required doses, in our workforce is a critical component to ensuring that our schools are able to reopen safely. Many of our teachers have elderly family members and have been deeply conflicted, and even troubled, by the Governor’s decision to push for schools to quickly reopen and to prioritize educators in the state’s vaccine distribution.

“However, this is the difficult decision she has made, and we are committed to following the plan she has laid out for our state. Vaccination is just one public health measure needed to safely reopen our schools. It is equally essential that reopening plans include strong requirements for social distancing, cleaning and sanitizing, robust use of PPE, and provisions to ensure adequate ventilation in each of our classrooms.”

Laurel Woodward, Bodewig’s counterpart at the Hermiston Association of Teachers, shared similar sentiments.

“Access to a full course of the COVID-19 vaccine will bring a great sense of relief to many educators working in Hermiston schools, and will help keep our students and communities safe as we bring kids back to the classroom,” she said in a statement.

“Of course, HAT would have preferred for Governor Brown to have prioritized vaccinating senior citizens and Oregon’s most vulnerable rather than her push to quickly reopen schools, but this is the course she has chosen. We are committed to continuing to serve our students during this transition, and we will work with the state and the district to ensure our return to in-person instruction is as safe as possible.”

Fiumara, the county’s public health director, said he does not think that immunizing educators before elderly residents is the right decision. He said elderly residents should be immunized “ahead or at least in line with” educators.

“I’ve been pushing for schools to be open already,” he said. “I think with the restrictions and the guidance in place, schools can operate with a measure of safety. I’m not saying there’s no risk.”

Fiumara said there is an inherent risk in allowing kids to return to schools. Although kids are less vulnerable to the symptoms of COVID-19, it is likely they could spread infection to their teachers or families, he said. However, he said the long-term impact of keeping kids out of schools will be more damaging than the shortfalls of reopening.

“In my view, schools could have opened without teachers having to be vaccinated first,” he said.

Seniors will start getting vaccinated on Feb. 7, when Oregon residents age 80 and older will become eligible. Each week, a new group of younger seniors will be made eligible until March 7, when 65-year-olds qualify. Some seniors showed up at this week’s vaccination clinics for educators but were turned away as the county follows state guidelines.

Fiumara said he likes the state’s phased-in approach, but there will be new logistics to consider.

Seniors are a much larger cohort than teachers, and based on high participation rates during vaccine drives at elder care facilities, he anticipates demand will be significantly higher.

While a drive-thru format would accommodate seniors with mobility issues, Fiumara said the health department will have to consider whether the teacher test sites would be able to handle the increased volume of traffic.

And although it took teachers about 60 to 90 minutes to wind their way through line during high-traffic periods, Fiumara doesn’t want to have seniors wait as long in line to get their shot.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been changed to reflect a clarification. Teacher Kati Funderburk would have continued to teach in-person school regardless of receiving the vaccination.]