Colorado educators begin scheduling COVID-19 vaccine appointments

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Colorado Springs school districts aren't wasting any time helping educators sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine.

As of Monday, District 11 officials said 25% of its staff have already registered to receive doses of the vaccine.

"We had over 1,000 scheduled with UC Health and we have more coming, more to be scheduled with Centura Health," Spokesperson Devra Ashby said.

At Academy District 20, at least 50% of its staff or 2,200 educators have also signed up.

"We had some educators who were contacted on Friday and Saturday, last weekend. So, we actually think we have our first batch of educators getting vaccinated this Thursday," Spokesperson Allison Cortez said.

Districts have been coordinating with local health care providers since Governor Jared Polis announced last month that educators would be next in line for the vaccine starting on Monday.

The state's updated distribution plan, phase 1B.2, also includes substitute teachers, bus drivers and counselors in addition to administrative, food and safety staff.

"We didn't just go to teachers. We sent that to our bus drivers. We sent that to our guest staff, which are substitute teachers, our lunch room workers," Cortez said.

Both districts said this will help offset shortages experienced during the last school year.

"We've had to close some schools because of the operational challenges that we've had," Ashby said, "With not being able to find coverage for classrooms, not being able to find coverage for other areas in the school."

The districts plan to vaccinate a majority of their educators by the end of February. According to a spokesperson with Centura Health, some of those educators will also be included in the mass vaccination event, scheduled February 13th and 14th at the Broadmoor World Arena.