Private school bans vaccinated teachers from being around children: report

Misinformation about coronavirus vaccines continues to impact public policy -- even at schools.

"A private school in the fashionable Design District of Miami sent its faculty and staff a letter last week about getting vaccinated against Covid-19. But unlike institutions that have encouraged and even facilitated vaccination for teachers, the school, Centner Academy, did the opposite: One of its co-founders, Leila Centner, informed employees 'with a very heavy heart' that if they chose to get a shot, they would have to stay away from students," The New York Timesreported Monday.

"In an example of how misinformation threatens the nation's effort to vaccinate enough Americans to get the coronavirus under control, Ms. Centner, who has frequently shared anti-vaccine posts on Facebook, claimed in the letter that 'reports have surfaced recently of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated. Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person,' she wrote, repeating a false claim that vaccinated people can somehow pass the vaccine to others and thereby affect their reproductive systems. (They can do neither.)" the newspaper fact-checked.

Teachers may lose their jobs if they get vaccinated.

"Teachers who get the vaccine over the summer will not be allowed to return, the letter said, until clinical trials on the vaccine are completed, and then only 'if a position is still available at that time' — effectively making teachers' employment contingent on avoiding the vaccine," The Times explained.

Antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke to students at the school days before being suspended from Instagram for pushing vaccine misinformation.