The New York City Department of Education this week notified dozens of school employees that they would be taking unpaid leave effective Monday, after law enforcement warned the department that it had provided fake evidence of coronavirus vaccination.
Law enforcement and the New York City School District Special Investigations Commissioner are investigating the matter, according to Nathaniel Styer, a spokesman for the Department of Education.
Mr Styer said: “The fraudulent vaccination cards are not only illegal, but also undermine the best line of defense our schools have against Covid-19: universal adult immunization. “We immediately decided to put those employees – less than 100 people – on unpaid leave.”
The department will not disclose what evidence it relied on to determine that the card was fake. “If they have proof that they have been vaccinated, they can bring it up,” Mr. Styer said.
Some employees told the city they followed due process and received the notification in error, but they have yet to receive a response, according to the United Teachers Union, a union of teachers. Mr. Styer said the department did in fact respond to employees.
“It is completely untrue that the DOE unilaterally removes UFT members from the payroll based solely on the assumption that vaccination documentation is fraudulent,” Beth A. Norton, an attorney for the union, wrote in a statement. letter to the ministry.
The teachers union asked the Department of Education to cancel the notices and ensure that the employees who accepted them remained on the payroll. The ministry declined to comment on the letter.
New York City new coronavirus infections have increased 55% in the past two weeks, largely due to the highly contagious Omicron sub-bacteria known as BA.2, according to The New York Times’s tracker. The number of people hospitalized has increased by 10% over the same period.
Mayor Eric Adams in March withdrew some of the pandemic restrictions, including school mask quest for students and educators has been in place since fall 2020. Masks still required in kindergartens, kindergartens are not eligible for vaccination.
The vaccine’s mandate is a tool that officials have used to limit the spread of the virus in the city. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio in August announced vaccine mission for all educators, in an effort to reassure families and staff that schools will be safe when they reopen.
That is First full vaccination mission for city workers, and it applies to nearly 150,000 employees. Those not vaccinated by September 27 were barred from school and given unpaid leave, with health insurance, for a year.
The mandate to force thousands of full-time school employees to get vaccinated, raising the percentage of those who have received at least one dose of the vaccine up to 95 percent. About 8,000 workers declined at the time and were placed on unpaid leave.
All of the city’s active education workers are now fully vaccinated, Styer said.
A small group of teachers have fought many times and failed to overturn the mandate. In February, U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to block it.
Several other city employees were suspended based on what they provided the city as proof of vaccination.
Dozens of city sanitation workers was suspended without pay in November as part of an investigation into the use of fake vaccine cards. Two senior police officers in December was also accused of submitting a fake vaccination card and is placed on the modifier task.
