Atlanta Public Schools responds to Kemp’s criticism over vaccination event

The chair of the Board of Atlanta Public Schools is responding to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s critical comments made about the school district during a news conference this week.

While praising Gwinnett County Public Schools for getting hundreds of employees vaccinated Monday, Gov. Kemp took aim at APS and expressed his frustration with the district for holding its own vaccination event.

APS officials had previously announced the event would take place more than two weeks from now, as other educators took advantage of the state’s mass vaccination sites.

“The Atlanta Public School’s board sent me a letter demanding that teachers needed to be vaccinated when they knew dang well we couldn’t do that,” Kemp reportedly said. “We didn’t have the supply to do that. I had said that.”

APS Board Chair Jason Esteves said that “demand from a month ago is not the full story and called the governor’s comment unfortunate adding that Kemp is playing politics in the middle of a pandemic,” according to one local news source.

“He made it sound like teachers can’t get vaccinated today. That we’re holding teachers. And that’s not the case,” Esteves explained, adding that the district organized a mass vaccination event with the Fulton County Health Department. APS officials are hoping to vaccinate as many as 8,000 of its teachers on March 24th, 26th, and 27th.

“The reason that’s a couple of weeks away is because you need the supply to account for thousands of teachers showing up at one time,” Esteves reportedly told local media. “We would be happy to hold that event this weekend if the governor supplied us with the vaccine to have it this weekend.”

>>Read more about what he had to say here.

And click here for a county-by-county guide of how districts are working to vaccinate their teachers.

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