AUSTIN, Texas — Texas education advocates are still waiting for an official response from Gov. Greg Abbott on teachers’ place in line for the COVID-19 vaccine. 

Last week Kent Scriber, the Fort Worth ISD superintendent and chair of the Texas Urban Council of Superintendents, and the Texas Classroom Teachers Association sent letters to Abbott, urging him to recognize teachers as front-line workers to get priority access to the vaccine.   

“Educators I consider to be frontline workers because they are interacting on a daily basis with a large volume of students, they come into contact with other people that could have COVID-19. Also if they were to have COVID-19, they could be spreading it to a lot of people. As a result I consider teachers to be priorities," said Abbott during an interview with Capital Tonight at the White House last week.

It’s still unclear if the official guidance has been or will be changed. Scriber told Capital Tonight that he hasn’t heard back from the governor’s office about the issue. The governor’s office has also not answered Capital Tonight’s request for a response. 

“I don’t necessarily know what the governor is saying because they throw out words like essential or priority but there’s no real answer to say what that means for us in schools.” Ovidia Molina said in an interview with Capital Tonight about the governor’s comments about the Texas State Teachers Association President.