De Pere school district weighs interest on holding vaccine clinic for eligible teens

DE PERE, Wis. (WBAY) - We first told you last week the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for teens 16 and older.

Now the Unified School District of De Pere is hoping to step in to help students get an appointment.

This week the district sent out a survey to parents in an effort to see if families would take advantage of a vaccine clinic for the eligible teens.

When the district held the vaccination clinic for staff, Superintendent Ben Villarruel, says just under 100 members lined up to get the shot.

District officials say the school doesn’t typically offer vaccine clinics or even the flu shot, but in light of the pandemic, they want to do what they can to make it as easy as possible for students to get the vaccine if they want it.

Now, the biggest hang-up is on vaccine availability, especially since the Johnson and Johnson vaccine has been put on hold.

The vaccine would be distributed by a local pharmacy.

Right now the school district is gathering information on interest and parents had until Wednesday to return the survey.

“For students, the parents would have to be with the students to receive the vaccine and in the survey, we tried to survey them to see if an after-school clinic or weekend clinic would be better for them,” said Villarruel.

Action 2 News reached out to several other school district in northeast Wisconsin, including Green Bay, Howard-Suamico and Appleton.

Neither of those schools, or other we spoke with have plans at this time to make the vaccine available for students.

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