MIAMI – A Miami-Dade charter school that has garnered worldwide attention for its controversial COVID-19 policies is changing course on its most recent issue.
School co-founder Leila Centner told Local 10 News’ Sanela Sabovic that she’s backing away from having students who have received the COVID-19 vaccine quarantine for 30 days.
She said that’s mostly due to the Department of Education getting involved and threatening to cut funding to the school.
Dr. Geeta Nayyar told Local 10 News there is no reason to quarantine after getting a vaccine.
“There is absolutely no data, nothing based on fact that require any kind of quarantine after a vaccination,” she said. “There is no evidence that any kind of viral shedding happens with these vaccines.”
Centner said she is against children getting the vaccine because she believes there is so much we don’t know about it when it comes to kids.
“These kids are not dying from Covid and there are kids dying from shots, you can look it up from the CDC’s database,” Centner said. “We have a small percentage of kids that rely on state money, and I didn’t want to punish them for something that none of our parents really want to buy into anyways, so I’ve since gotten rid of that.”
Centner said she bases her policies on science, and that she has spoken to pediatricians who are against the vaccine.
“There’s just so much we don’t know because this shot is very new and it’s still under EU order, and for children there’s so much to learn, so I like to err on the side of caution,” she said.
Dr. Nayyar said there is a lot of misinformation being put out, and she said if parents have questions, they should consult their pediatricians and no one else.
“Children have died from COVID-19 from all over the globe,” she said. “The number one thing we can do to protect our children is protect them by getting vaccinated. Very similar to what we do for MMR, diphtheria, typhoid, these are childhood vaccinations.”
Centner said that her school is a holistic school, and she went on to say that parents pretty much have the same thought process that she does, and that no parent she’s spoken to wants to vaccinate their child.
If they want to, she encourages those parents to do it during the summer.