Longtime NYC Teacher Wins Court Battle, Reinstated After Firing Over COVID Vaccine – But Remains Barred From School: ‘I’m not a criminal’; Pediatricians Scale Back On COVID Shots Amid Declining Interest From Families, and other C-Virus related stories
Longtime NYC teacher wins court battle, reinstated after firing over COVID vaccine – but remains barred from school: ‘I’m not a criminal’:
A veteran Queens teacher who was fired for refusing to get the COVID vaccine and then reinstated by a judge says she was still blocked from entering her school Tuesday.
Daphne Halkias, a single mom of four and educator for nearly 30 years, told The Post she “did everything right” in terms of fighting her case — and is now “kind of disgusted” that she is continuing to be hassled.
“I’m not a criminal, and yet they are making me feel like I’m breaking the law,” Halkias, 55, said after she was unceremoniously booted from PS-85 in Long Island City when she showed up for teacher orientation.
A judge last month ruled that Halkias was to be reinstated to the city Department of Education effective Aug. 1, after a protracted court battle over her employment.
Halkias of Whitestone had been working as a pre-kindergarten teacher at the Judge Charles Vallone School for 23 years, and with the DOE for 29 years, when she was canned Sept. 5, 2022, for refusing to get the jab for religious reasons as a Greek Orthodox Christian.
Queens Supreme Court Justice Chereé Buggs last month found that the DOE’s denial of Halkias’ religious exemption was “arbitrary and capricious, lacking a factual basis and adequate explanation” and ordered her to be instated with back pay.
But “I went today for work, and I was told that there was nothing for me,” Halkias told The Post on Tuesday. “The principal said that she had no directions given to her about my case, there was no position for me, and I couldn’t get a time card because I’m not officially in the system.
“And she was told that if I were to stay there, I would have to be escorted out — which my old security guard had to escort me out.” —>READ MORE HERE
Pediatricians scale back on COVID shots amid declining interest from families:
Unlike other vaccinations, COVID shots aren’t required for kids to attend school.
When pediatrician Eric Ball opened a refrigerator full of childhood vaccines, all the expected shots were there — DTaP, polio, pneumococcal vaccine — except one.
“This is where we usually store our COVID vaccines, but we don’t have any right now because they all expired at the end of last year and we had to dispose of them,” said Ball, who is part of a pediatric practice in Orange County, California.
“We thought demand would be way higher than it was.”
Pediatricians across the country are pre-ordering the updated and reformulated COVID-19 vaccine for the fall and winter respiratory virus season, but some doctors said they’re struggling to predict whether parents will be interested. Providers like Ball don’t want to waste money ordering doses that won’t be used, but they need enough on hand to vaccinate vulnerable children.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone 6 months or older get the updated COVID vaccination, but in the 2023-24 vaccination season, only about 15% of eligible children in the U.S. got a shot.
Ball said it was difficult to let vaccines go to waste last year. It was the first time the federal government was no longer picking up the tab for the shots, and providers had to pay upfront for the vaccines. Parents would often skip the COVID shot, which can have a short shelf life compared with other vaccines.
“Watching it sitting on our shelves expiring every 30 days, that’s like throwing away $150 repeatedly every day, multiple times a month,” Ball said.
This year, Ball slashed his fall vaccine order to the bare minimum to avoid another costly mistake.
“We took the number of flu vaccines that we order, and then we ordered 5% of that in COVID vaccines,” Ball said. “It’s a guess.”
That small vaccine order cost more than $63,000, he said. —>READ MORE HERE
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