TOLEDO, Ohio — Gov. Mike DeWine announced Tuesday the first list of schools in the state to begin vaccinating their staff starting on Feb. 1 but, none in northwest Ohio made the cut.
And while local districts are left frustrated, one school was able to get their hands on enough vaccine doses for their entire staff.
Notre Dame Academy in Toledo vaccinated 86% of their staff Thursday.
The big question is: how?
Kim Grilliot, the president of Notre Dame Academy, says their diocesan office encouraged all Catholic schools to partner with local health care agencies and see if there is a way to get vaccines.
"We are blessed to have right next to us, on our campus, Encompass Health and so when we spoke with them they said they would be happy to partner with us," explained Grilliot.
There were some rumors that parents of Notre Dame students were also being vaccinated however, the school's president says that is not true.
All 97 staff members who were vaccinated will return to Encompass Health on Feb. 25 to receive their second dose.
While other schools are waiting to find out when they can vaccinate their staff, we asked the Toledo-Lucas County Health Commissioner Eric Zgodzinski if this goes against the priority list DeWine set up.
Zgodzinski says the goal is to get the most susceptible to COVID-19 vaccinated, which are the elderly. However, he still sees every vaccination as a positive.
"We got people vaccinated. And I don't want to hear that in the sense that someone jumped the line, but we got people vaccinated and every vaccine in the arm of a Lucas County resident is a win for the county, the state and all of us in the United States," said Zgodzinski.
The process for schools to get vaccines is that first they are asked how many they will need, then they pick a provider like the health department, Mercy Health or ProMedica.
The health department is expected to find out how many more vaccines they are getting on Friday.
From there, they'll be able to come up with a plan to get those doses in as many arms as possible.