How the Centner Academy Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers - The New York Times

How the Centner Academy Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers - The New York Times

How a Miami School Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers

The Centner Academy barred teachers newly vaccinated against the coronavirus from being near students. Some parents threatened to withdraw their children. Others clamored to enroll.

MIAMI — A fifth-grade math and science teacher peddled a bogus conspiracy theory on Wednesday to students at Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, warning them that they should not hug parents who had been vaccinated against the coronavirus for more than five seconds because they might be exposed to harmful vaccine shedding.

“Hola Mami,” one student wrote in an email to her parents from school, saying that the teacher was “telling us to stay away from you guys.”

Nearly a week before, the school had threatened teachers’ employment if they got a coronavirus vaccine before the end of the school year.

Alarmed parents frantically texted one another on WhatsApp, trying to find a way to pull their children out at the end of the term.

Inside the Centner Academy, however, “hundreds of queries from all over the world” came in for teaching positions, according to the administration. More came from people who wanted to enroll their children at the school, where tuition runs up to $30,000 a year.

The small school in Miami’s trendy Design District became a national beacon for anti-vaccination activists practically overnight last week, just as public health officials in the United States wrestled with how to overcome vaccine skepticism.

The policy barring teachers from contact with students after getting the vaccine brought a flurry of television news crews who parked outside the school for days, prompting teachers to keep children indoors for physical education and recess. Leila Centner, the school’s co-founder, who says she is not against fully tested vaccines, wrote on Instagram that the media “are trying to destroy my reputation because I went against their narrative.”

Devoted supporters cheered her on.

“We won’t let them take you down!” one of them wrote on CONTINUE READING: How the Centner Academy Became a Beacon for Anti-Vaxxers - The New York Times