Fr Co Charter System Employees Take Advantage of Vaccine Incentive as COVID Cases Continue Decline

The number of COVID cases in the Franklin County School Charter School system continues to drop while the number of employees taking advantage of the new vaccination incentive program goes up.

As of Monday, the number of students with confirmed cases of COVID had dropped to 17 from 36 the week before or 0.47% of the 3,603 students in the system.

Additionally, the number of students at home in quarantine also dropped to 148 from 253 a week earlier.

The number of students under modified quarantine rose from 53 to 113 from the week before when the school system began charting those numbers.

As for school system employees, four have a confirmed case of COVID out of an employee population of 510, which is down from 514 a week earlier.

No employees were quarantined for possible exposure to the virus.

Last week, the school system announced new COVID mitigation protocols.

These included providing masks in more locations in each school for those students who want one, and changes in quarantine procedures for vaccinated and unvaccinated students and staff.

At the time, Forrer said he would not mandate vaccinations but he did put a monetary incentive in place for employees to get vaccinated.

“I am not going to mandate vaccinations but I am going to encourage them. Therefore I am going to offer a monetary incentive of at least $300 to any employee who can prove vaccination by November 1,” he said. “I also want to assure our citizens that no local money is being used to fund this. We are using federal stimulus funds. I also want to state that this incentive is not entirely altruistic on my part. It is cost-effective. It costs the district $1,000 every time a teacher has to quarantine or contracts COVID. So, in the end, this policy will serve the district money.”

Forrer tells WLHR News that since last week, there have been a number of employees who have taken advantage of the vaccination incentive.

He said Wednesday about 80 employees were vaccinated last week and to date, 150 of the school system’s 510 employees have been vaccinated since the incentive began.