While they have no qualms with the selection of people who got first priority for vaccinations, teachers in Saskatchewan would like to be given priority when then vaccine becomes more widely available. After all, without the vaccine, the risk of a school shutdown grows.  

"We just know that in order to keep our classrooms running," said Saskatchewan Teacher's Federation President Patrick Maze, "we have adults in the building including teachers, educational assistants, principals, vice-principals, and maintenance staff. If we want to keep those buildings open, we need to make sure that teachers are vaccinated as well." 

Maze stressed that he had no issue with the list of those who were getting vaccinated first and it made sense to him to get frontline healthcare workers immunized as quickly as possible, along with people in long-term care homes. He also stressed, however, that schools are important vaccination targets for the good of everyone in the province.  

"Our communities have been encouraged to socially distance," he explained. "Well, we can't when we've got 30 or 35 students, so teachers are put at higher risk in those situations. We want to make sure that, if we want to keep classrooms open and keep the economy running, school staff are vaccinated." 

According to Maze, keeping schools open allows for not only kids learning in an environment they're used to but for parents to be able to go back to work without incurring childcare costs. The province, however, doesn't appear to have plans to bump teachers up the vaccine priority list just yet.  

"Phase two, when we get into that, that's when we'll be looking at the next priorities," said Health Minister Paul Merriman. "We have been getting a lot of requests from a lot of different areas saying they would like to be the next in line. We prioritize them based on the science that Dr. (Saqib) Shahab and his team are able to inform us with where we need to get these vaccines at the highest priority." 

Dr. Shahab, Saskatchewan's Chief Medical Health Officer, added that teachers were not among the highest risk groups for the virus as laid out by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.