The New York City Department of Education this week informed dozens of school employees that they would be placed on unpaid leave effective Monday after an internal investigation found they had provided false evidence of coronavirus vaccination.
Law enforcement officers and the New York City School District’s Special Investigation Commissioner are investigating the case.
“Fraudal vaccination cards are not only illegal, they undermine the best protection our schools have against Covid-19: universal adult vaccination,” said Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the Department of Education. “We immediately moved to leave those employees – less than 100 – on leave without pay.”
The department declined to reveal what evidence it relied on to determine the cards were fake. “If they have proof that they have been vaccinated, they can show it,” Mr Styer said.
Several employees told the city that they followed proper procedures and received the notices in error, but have not yet received a response, according to the teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers.
“It is completely inappropriate for the DOE to unilaterally remove UFT members from its payroll on the mere suspicion that vaccination documentation is fraudulent,” Beth A. Norton, a union attorney, wrote in a letter to the department.
The teachers’ union demanded that the Education Department withdraw the terminations and ensure that the employees they received remain on the payroll. The department declined to respond to the letter.
New cases of coronavirus in New York City have increased by 55 percent in the past two weeks, fueled largely by the highly contagious Omicron subvariant known as BA.2, according to DailyExpertNews tracker. The number of hospital admissions has increased by 10 percent in the same period.
Mayor Eric Adams rolled back a number of pandemic restrictions in March, including a mandate for school masks for students and educators in effect since the fall of 2020. not yet eligible for vaccination.
Vaccination mandates are a tool that officials have used to curb the spread of the virus in the city. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a vaccine mandate to all educators in August, in an effort to reassure families and workers that schools would be safe when they reopen.
It was the first full vaccination mandate for city workers and covered nearly 150,000 workers. Those who had not been vaccinated by September 27 were not allowed to enter the schools and were given a year of unpaid leave with health insurance.
The mandate forced thousands of full-time school workers to be vaccinated, bringing the percentage who had received at least one dose of a vaccine to 95 percent. About 8,000 workers refused at the time and were placed on unpaid leave.
All of the city’s active educators are now fully vaccinated, Styer said.
A small group of teachers have fought repeatedly and in vain to overturn the mandate. In February, the US Supreme Court rejected a request to block it.
A number of other city employees have been suspended based on what they provided to the city as proof of vaccination.
Dozens of city sanitation workers were suspended unpaid in November as part of an investigation into the use of fake vaccine cards. Two high-ranking police officers were also charged in December with providing false vaccination cards and were given modified service.
