My Own, Personal “Operation Moses”

Pennsylvania got off to a poor start to its vaccination efforts, but it is quickly catching up. I’d been waiting impatiently for the day when we could begin to get our boarding students vaccinated, and then news broke last Monday (4/12/21) that the state was moving up by one week eligibility for 16 and 17-year-olds. It was time to act!

At our encouragement, our eligible boarding students have been signing up for vaccination, and we can be reasonably optimistic that most of them will be vaccinated before the end of the school year. There was a hiccup when the J&J vaccine had to take a “pause” last Tuesday, which led to the postponement of a lot of the appointments that our most ambitious students had made the day before. Nonetheless, with the help of a colleague in our deans’ office, I am running a vast logistical enterprise to get all these kids to and from their vaccination appointments all over Lower Bucks County. And the county has stepped up; it is now reporting that 349,390 doses have been administered so far to an adult population of only 501,350.

I can’t remember working on a more uplifting, hopeful project than this one. The last 13 months have miserable. Even though our school has benefited from structural advantages that are increasing families’ interest in boarding schools during the pandemic, we are still acutely aware of all the ways in which our community isn’t what it was during the old normal. But with every additional student who gets vaccinated, hope increases that we can reopen in the fall with fewer COVID restrictions, and maybe with most of our boarding students here on campus.

That goal is self-serving, but I am actually thinking right now about more proximate victories. Can we send every boarding student home to their family having already been vaccinated, so those families can be safe? Can we send all of our seniors off into the summer having already been vaccinated so that we can be sure they’ll be welcome on their college campuses in the fall? Can we get enough of the student body vaccinated that prom will be a safe event five weeks from now?

We’re not going to reach 100% despite all of my efforts. Families have different reasons for delaying vaccination, and when it comes to private medical matters, we don’t push. Still, with every student I personally drive to a vaccination, my spirits lift a little bit. (As a school employee, I’m already fully vaccinated, thus freeing me to do these drives with a clear conscience.) It’s an end to a school year like no other, one that I hope to never see again. Still, I have the rare opportunity to experience the joy of vaccination as a path to freedom over and over again vicariously through the kids, and that makes it almost worth it.