HIDOE, DOH haven’t discussed student vaccine mandate yet

Interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi of the Hawaii State Department of Education came under fire Thursday for haphazard COVID-19 testing in public schools and said he had not held discussions yet with state health officials about a possible vaccination mandate for public school students age 12 and older.

HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr. testified at a Board of Education meeting Thursday that, “there are major safety concerns in our schools, a lack of planning for worst-case scenarios. There are inconsistent practices throughout our system despite the department’s health and safety guidance. The system is burning down under your watch as school-level personnel increasingly lose faith that anything will be done by you or by Hayashi.”

“The honeymoon is over for Hayashi. It’s time to hold him and the department accountable. Hear the voices of thousands of school-level personnel who are struggling in our schools while department leadership paints a rosy picture and blows smoke you know where. See through the smokescreen and do something!” Tui told the board.

In one of the strictest anti-COVID-19 mandates in the nation, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District voted Sept. 9 to require students age 12 and up to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 19. Those who can’t show proof of vaccination won’t be allowed in-person learning after the winter break without a medical or other exemption. The district is one of the largest in the country with 630,000 students.

BOE member Bruce Voss referenced the Los Angeles mandate and asked Hayashi a straightforward question but received a series of bureaucratic, unclear answers.

Voss: Is the department now reviewing and considering a student vaccination mandate similar to what was created by the Los Angeles United School district …. and if so, what is the timeline for decision making?

Hayashi: The Department of Education is the agency that determines the recommendations regarding immunizations. Thank you.

Voss: I understand the Department of Health’s role and I think everyone on the board supports that, superintendent, but I’m looking here at the Department of Education website as to the immunizations that our students are required to have in Hawaii. They include diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, hepatitis, measles, mumps, rubella chickenpox, and then at later ages in seventh grade, HPV, MCV, and of course the tetanus booster. Given that those immunizations are required for all students based on science to protect student health, why isn’t there more urgency to determine whether and when a student vaccination mandate would be appropriate for Hawaii schools to protect all of our students and staff?

Hayashi: Thank you. Member Voss. The determination or the decision for those vaccinations for our students are determined by the Hawaii State Department of Health. We do defer to their guidance as the subject matter experts really in health for that and I do believe that there is a process that needs to be followed for a vaccination to be required for students in Hawaii.

Voss: Last question, because that doesn’t really answer my question at all. Is the department, or someone associated with the department, at least in discussions with the Department of Health about whether such a student vaccination mandate would be appropriate for our students to protect their health, and if so, when such a mandate would be put into place?

Hayashi: Thank you for the question. Currently, we have not engaged with the Department of Health specifically for a timeline on the COVID-19 vaccination. I will engage them following this meeting, and I can get back to you in terms of what process and the requirements are. We do realize the importance of that. And that’s how I’ve come to the understanding that it is not our, it is the Department of Health’s area of expertise in the discussions that I’ve had with them, but I can, I will follow up with them though.

Voss “strongly encouraged” that discussion to take place and for HIDOE to “act promptly” if warranted.

Hayashi said he had no information on how many of the HIDOE’s 87,000 vaccine-eligible students have been immunized against the virus.

Health Department spokesman Brooks Baehr told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser the agency “is not currently discussing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students age 12 and older. We are focused on the voluntary vaccination of those who are eligible today.”

Parents ask ‘why aren’t all schools testing?’

Catherine Matavao, the mother of two public school students, shared her concerns in live testimony, and said, “My concern is over surveillance testing and why weekly surveillance testing has not been implemented. With as long as we’ve been back in school with as high as the daily positivity rate has been, over 5%, there’s really no excuse.”

Parent Diane Kam asked board members, “Why aren’t all schools testing? We heard a principal state that it’s because it’s only recommended, not required. Parents are asking why isn’t our school on the list? My daughter’s school is on the list, but it’s only for a one-time, pop-up event, not the ongoing surveillance testing that we actually need. Other parents were told first come, first served; we only have 100 tests. Do they only have 100 students and staff at that school?”

Another reason all schools are not participating, Kam said, is “because school principals are unable to find staff to coordinate the surveillance testing efforts at their school. We want COVID surveillance testing in schools to succeed in order to reduce the risk to in-person learning, but without the funding of staffing to carry it out, it will be doomed to fail before it even gets rolling. We need staffing and a proactive coordinated state-level strategy to make testing in schools work the way it was intended to work, namely to be a mitigation strategy,” following U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance.

George White, father of two private school students and uncle to three keiki who attend public schools, testified, “We still don’t have any form of testing in a majority of all of our schools. As the crisis currently stands with our positivity rates, DOE or DOH should be flooding the schools with hundreds of thousands of rapid antigen tests. Where are these tests? Who has them? Who has what? If we don’t have them, why not? And when does the DOE or BOE expect to demand them to protect our keiki?”

A number of testifiers also called for greater transparency of what is actually happening in schools and classrooms, with at least two accusing the HIDOE of “gaslighting” parents “because their experiences are so different from what’s being reported to families,” said another parent.

The superintendent said Thursday 90.4% of HIDOE’s salaried school and office employees statewide were fully or partially vaccinated as of Thursday — that’s 19,871 out of 21,978 workers. Two complexes — Farrington-Kaiser-Kalani and Kaimuki-McKinley-Roosevelt — reported 95% of employees were vaccinated.

HIDOE has conducted 151 school-based vaccination clinics for students, staff, and household members, according to Hayashi, and is ready to offer clinics at elementary schools once COVID-19 vaccines are approved for younger children.

Board members also were told the HIDOE just this week set up an attendance system to track whether student absences were due to being quarantined or other reasons. For more than six weeks into this school year, the department has not collected figures on how many staff or students are isolated because they have COVID-19 or were close contacts. It’s unclear if the state is tracking the number of staff who have been isolated at any one time.

Just 59 out of 257 schools are offering testing, some are one-day events

The health and education departments are finally ramping up surveillance testing, with all 257 public schools expected to be registered for the federally funded Operation Expanded Testing program by Tuesday, Deputy Superintendent Phyllis Unebasami told the board. But more than a month and a half into the school year only 59 schools have started testing, and many of those aren’t available daily or frequently. Some of them have been one-time events. A total of 13 charter schools have started testing.

“Our schools will be registered to be eligible for testing and receiving testing kits. It will not mean that they will have started testing,” Unebasami said. “There is a process in which they need to get consent from parents and also then use that information in order to then ask for the testing kits. We know from experience that the testing kits come pretty quickly, but getting consent from parents may be our longest time that we need to make sure that every parent is informed and has an opportunity to sign up.”

Board member Bill Arakaki, a retired complex area superintendent from Kauai, also asked, “Upon completing the permissions and the logistics of testing, with the added things that principals and everyone else on campus needs to do, are there supports and other organizing, or whoever can support this being done once things are completed?”

Unebasami said, “These are added responsibilities that are at the point where our students and our employees are interacting and so for that reason, I do want to say that it is a real challenge for us to institute school-based testing. However, there is a commitment to do so. In talking with schools, school leaders, there are different ways that we’re handling it. There’s volunteers. There’s also the use of our Hawaii Keiki nurses. In fact, in some of our areas, we are seeing schools centralizing testing. If the schools are nearby each other, they’re actually centralizing the testing operations so that several schools can access one area, one facility. We also have approved the use of casual hires to help the school leaders set up testing teams for their schools as needed for the challenge.”

School testing results taking three days when CDC says they should take less than a day

The state is sending testing nasal swabs from its school sites to the continental United States, so the results are not available for about three days. That fails to meet the federal CDC recommendations for students, who it says should be tested at least once a week and results reported within 24 hours.

BOE Chair Payne asked Hayashi, “The tests that you were using require three days and a trip to the mainland for results. I’m just wondering what went into the decision to choose that as opposed to the more rapid alternate tests that are also fairly widely available in the community?”

Hayashi answered, “The current three day-turnaround is, what currently is, I do believe that the Department of Health is trying to secure a local vendor which will definitely cut down the turnaround time of the test. So currently three days, hopefully, we can cut that down significantly.”

“My question really reflects the concerns that folks have about the three days because if someone is infected, that delay is significant in the amount of contacts that could occur,” Payne said.

Hayashi said, “For tests to be validated, it needs to be validated by, I believe what’s called a CLIA laboratory, and I think those laboratories to get that CLIA certification must meet certain stringent requirements. I’m sure that there are labs in Hawaii that have that certification. I do believe though that with the current testing that’s happening statewide in response to community need, CLIA labs may not be available. But I do know that the Department of Health is definitely working on that as partners on that with us.”

Teachers, office assistants, education assistants, school health assistants, special services personnel and school administrators such as principals joined concerned parents in submitting more than 150 pages of written testimony raising a variety of health and safety concerns.

Arakaki said, “Hearing testimony from employees, teachers, and HSTA regarding the anxiety and stresses regarding safety on campuses, it’s really growing and things, so to consider not overloading your folks is a real consideration that needs to be worked on.”

Board members also asked about what kind of pandemic numbers could trigger a return to distance or hybrid learning.

“In conversation with the Department of Health, have talked about what might be a trigger and what are they looking for when they look for clusters when they believe that it becomes unhealthy or unsafe for in-person instruction, and we were told that we might be looking at, and this is an approximation, not a firm number, is about 20% of confirmed cases in a class,” said Unebasami Hayashi’s deputy.

The DOH on Friday reported 15 new coronavirus-related deaths, the highest single-day total since the pandemic started last year. Hawaii’s COVID-19 death toll now stands at 694, with 105 of those fatalities this month. The health department also reported 581 new cases Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 74,437 since the pandemic began.

Since July 1, the HIDOE has reported more than 3,000 cases at school facilities and offices.