JMCSS employees receive first vaccinations

JACKSON, Tenn. — Some school district employees in Madison County are breathing a sigh of relief today after getting their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“I’m thankful,” Helen Brooks, attendance and registration secretary at North Side High School, said.

“Relieved. It takes a weight off,” said Elizabeth Pickens, a fourth grade teacher at Denmark Elementary School.

“I feel more comfortable now going to work,” said North Side High School assistant principal Tony Brown.

Faculty and staff at Jackson-Madison County Schools received the COVID-19 vaccine on Friday as part of Phase 1B of the vaccine distribution.

The state of Tennessee originally had school employees farther down the list, but the group was moved up in late December.

“I’m very thankful the state puts the teachers and staff up there as necessary people to be out there working,” Brooks said.

Jackson-Madison County Schools are currently on a hybrid schedule. They’ve gone back and forth between hybrid and in-person learning since August after a survey at the beginning of the school year indicated teachers were concerned for their safety.

At least 750 of the district’s 1,800 employees have signed up so far to get vaccinated, which the district says is another sign of increased concern about their safety.

“Since we’re on the front line and everything, we just think it’s very important that we use this opportunity so we can feel safe,” Brown said.

“We don’t know what our kids go home to every day. We don’t know if they’re wearing masks, if they’re socially distancing, and then they come back to school,” Pickens said.

“It has been a concern. My husband is 74. Dealing with kids and parents all day being a secretary, it just makes me feel safer being there at school,” Brooks said.

But they’re ready to be back in the classroom full time with another layer of protection in the fight against COVID-19.

“It’s going to make it easier to go back into the classroom every day because, some days I wonder if this is what I need to be doing. Is this what’s best for my family? And it is. This is just going to make it easier to do that,” Pickens said.

This was only part of the Jackson-Madison County Schools’ faculty and staff. The rest of those employees will be vaccinated on Wednesday, along with private schools employees.

As a reminder, the Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department is not taking individual appointments at this time.