City teachers lament discrimination over vaccine exemptions

New York City educators who were granted medical or religious exemptions from the required COVID-19 vaccination were mandated to report to school buildings where some said they were treated like pariahs.

The teachers and other staffers who showed up at a building on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush were met with hostility from vaccinated DOE workers already at the site.

Some were directed to one stairwell — forbidden to walk down the first-floor corridor where the vaccinated staff work, and forbidden from using their restroom.

Upstairs, those with exemptions made do with only a single toilet that flushed irregularly, or tiny children’s toilets, staffers told The Post.

“The whole thing just reeks of discrimination and segregation. I never in my life have ever experienced something like this,” said a teacher who normally works on Staten Island and has a medical exemption for the vaccine.

“I’m miserable because I’m not with children and I’m not with my teachers. I’m sitting here in a room not helping a soul. I feel like we’re being punished,” said the educator who has a medical exemption.

Another teacher assigned to the building, a former parochial school used for several years by the DOE but largely empty recently, said she suffered a concussion Thursday after a window fell out of its frame and hit her on the head.

She said the building was dirty and, with nine other people in a room with her, it was difficult to teach her special education students remotely.

“What they’re doing to us is just disgusting,” she said.

To accommodate other teachers, the DOE rented the former St. Brigid School in the East Village from the Archdiocese of New York.

A September agreement between the United Federation of Teachers and the DOE allowing for the exemptions says that those granted one would not be allowed to enter school buildings, but “may” be assigned to work at administrative offices, according to a copy of the document seen by The Post.

The DOE would not say why the educators were being assigned to work sites now or provide the cost of renting the East Village school.

DOE spokesman, Nathaniel Styer has said 300 staffers had exemptions and were working from four sites, but would not disclose the locations of the others.