Private School Warns Its Teachers Not to Get Vaccine

Citing debunked theory, Fla.'s Centner Academy says staff will be kept from students if they do so
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 27, 2021 8:33 AM CDT
Private School Warns Its Teachers Not to Get Vaccine
Photo of the school from Google Maps.   (Google Maps, via Washington Post)

While many schools are encouraging staff to get the COVID vaccine, one private school in Miami is doing the opposite. Per CBS4, the Centner Academy, which charges up to $30,000 per year for students in pre-K through eighth grade, emailed a letter to employees Monday citing debunked anti-vaccination theories, warning them they shouldn't get the vaccine. Among the not-credible concerns cited in the email, penned by co-founder Leila Centner, who runs the school with husband David: "It appears that those who have received the injections may be transmitting something from their bodies," causing "adverse reproductive issues" in others. The letter cites three women "among our own population" who saw their "menstrual cycles impacted," per the New York Times. The Washington Post notes there's no evidence the COVID vaccines OKed in the US have negative effects on women's reproductive health, or that anything is "transmitted" from those who've been vaccinated.

Per the letter, teachers who've already been vaccinated have to let higher-ups know ASAP, so they can be kept distanced from students. For those yet to get the vaccine, they have two choices: Wait until the school year is over, or inform the school if they get it before then, "as we cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known." Teachers who get vaccinated over the summer won't be allowed back until the "experimental" vaccines—currently administered under an FDA Emergency Authorization Use order—complete all clinical trials (and that's if a teaching position is even still available). Leila Centner has put up anti-vaccination posts on social media in the past, and the Centners brought anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. to speak to students in February. An infectious diseases specialist tells CBS4 she's "devastated" about the misinformation in the letter, and that it's especially "egregious" for an educational institution to be spreading it. (More coronavirus vaccine stories.)

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