Wenatchee Area School Districts Have Lower Employee COVID-19 Vaccination Levels Than State Overall

Most school districts in the region surrounding Wenatchee have employee COVID-19 vaccination rates below the state's average for schools.

Only the Cascade district that includes Leavenworth has a higher level of classroom staff who are fully vaccinated.

The Eastmont district in East Wenatchee is eight percentage points below the state average, which is not a big surprise to Superintendent Garn Christensen.

"Vaccinations for a lot of years have had a lot of different opinions on them, and that has continued with this vaccination requirement, so that wasn't anything new," said Christensen.

Meanwhile, the vaccination level of workers in both the Moses Lake and Ephrata districts is not known because they have has not complied with the state's reporting requirements. Both are listed as "null".

A look at numbers reported by Washington’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction shows vaccination levels of classroom staff to be 88 percent in the Wenatchee district, 82 percent in Eastmont, 81 percent in Cashmere, 85 percent in Lake Chelan and 92 percent in the Cascade district. 

The state overall has a 90.4 percent vaccination level for classroom staff, and 89.2 percent for all K-12 workers.  Public school employees actually trail the level of fully vaccinated state employees, which is almost 94 percent.

The comparatively low vaccination level has not put a strain on staffing at Eastmont schools, where Superintendent Christensen says the district is meeting the state's minimum requirements to keep unvaccinated workers on the job.

"We're trying to walk a real fine line, Christensen said. "We're making sure that we meet the legal requirements to provide educational services. We're not going beyond those, but at the same time we're not ignoring them either."

To meet the state minimum, Eastmont is granting exemptions to its unvaccinated employees by requiring them to wear highly protective masks and submit to extra COVID-19 testing if the district experiences a virus outbreak.

Christensen noted that some school districts far exceed the state’s minimum standards.