St. Louis County will hold a mass COVID-19 vaccination event just for educators next week, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page announced Tuesday.

The St. Louis County Department of Public Health will conduct its first mass vaccination event for school personnel on Tuesday, March 23, and Wednesday, March 24, at the existing county mass vaccination site at the Florissant Valley campus of St. Louis Community College in North County.

As many as 2,000 school employees could be vaccinated at the two-day event, which will be supported by the Missouri National Guard. Employees of all county schools — public, private and parochial — are being given an opportunity to preregister on a separate registration list, and several thousand education staff have already signed up.

Missouri just opened eligibility for the vaccine to teachers and school staff, along with other “critical infrastructure” workers like grocery store and transportation workers, on Monday. Healthcare workers, first responders, caregivers, residents over 65 and under 65 with certain health conditions were already eligible for the vaccine.

Several school districts in South County have held or will hold events this week to vaccinate teachers and other school staff. Check back to www.callnewspapers.com for more details about those events.

“I’m very pleased that we can offer educators and other school personnel the opportunity to become vaccinated through our collaboration with County schools,” Page said in a news release. “We all want students and educators safely back in their classrooms. In-person learning is the ideal setting and our children need to be in a place where they can socialize, develop interpersonal skills and share life experiences with their friends. Vaccinating our educators is a key step to returning to a traditional classroom setting.”

Next week’s event will be the first in a series of vaccination opportunities that the county health department plans to conduct for school personnel in the coming weeks.

Educators who are in Category 1B, Tier 2 will be given preference for this event, but all school personnel are welcome to preregister through their schools. For this population, DPH worked with school leaders to identify an exposure category to make sure that we further prioritize those who are the most regularly exposed to several other people as part of their jobs. Those with questions about signing up should ask their schools for information.

As in past DPH vaccination events, appointments are required and can only be obtained by preregistering. No walk-up service will be offered.