The clinics, which are being organized by Brockton Public Schools , the Brockton Board of Health and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health , will be held on Monday, May 24 and Tuesday, May 25 at various schools.
The mobile clinics will be held at Ashfield Middle School , West Middle School , Edgar B. Davis K-8 School and Plouffe Academy on Monday and East Middle School , North Middle School and South Middle School on Tuesday.
Clinics will also be held for high school students on Tuesday at Brockton High School and Champion High School at the Keith Center.
The district already held a vaccination clinic for high school students on May 6 and 7 at Brockton High , but is offering another opportunity next week.
Nearly 200 high school students and 30-plus family members were vaccinated during those first two clinics.
Next week's clinics will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at each school. Students are required to bring in signed consent forms and may be vaccinated during the school day.
"We are providing, through the Department of Health , mobile vaccination units that will arrive at every school," said Andrew Robinson , a former Ward 2 Brockton School Committee member and current lead program manager at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health . "Think about what most people would experience relative to a blood drive, a bus or a minibus fully equipped for medical service like vaccination that will pull in the parking lot, be available to vaccinate students, family members of those students if they so choose, staff who may still need to get vaccinated or, honestly, anybody else who can get themselves to the middle school during those clinic times."
Students must be 12 years of age or older to receive the vaccine. Students who are fully remote in Brockton can be vaccinated after school next week at any of the clinics.
"The goal that we're establishing is to try to vaccinate 1,000 total students between all the middle schools," Robinson told school committee members on Tuesday evening. "It's an ambitious goal, but I think one that we're well-positioned to hit."
Families are asked to fill out a preregistration form so the city knows how many vaccine doses it will need next week.
The city, school district and the state Department of Public Health are holding a virtual educational forum from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday ahead of next week's clinics.
Jessica Silva-Hodges , a spokesperson for Brockton Public Schools , also interviewed Dr. Richard Herman , an emergency physician and the city's pandemic consultant, about the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and to answer parents' questions in a video that was posted to the district's website.
"We're grateful to the mayor's office, the Brockton Board of Health and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for providing this opportunity to our middle school and younger high school students," Silva-Hodges said Wednesday. "We've heard from many BPS parents who are thrilled about the convenience of having their family vaccinated at their neighborhood school. Getting as many students vaccinated as possible is critical to driving down the positivity rate in our city and to keeping our students in the classroom."
Because the Pfizer vaccine requires two doses 21 days apart, clinics will also be held on June 14 and 15 at the same schools as next week.
Robinson said Mayor Robert Sullivan's office has committed to providing pizza and ice cream for students as a celebration during the second-dose clinics.
"There are districts and communities all across the state trying to figure out how to vaccinate middle school kids," Robinson said. "To my knowledge, at this point, the plan that Brockton has in place — the way we scaled it up and the speed at which we did it — is among the most comprehensive and ambitious plans that's in place right now in the state."
Sullivan said Brockton is leading the way when it comes to vaccinating students.
"We're ahead of the curve in the commonwealth by having a Thursday and Friday clinic here at Brockton High School . It hasn't happened in the commonwealth," he said. "And we're going to be ahead of the curve again with the middle schools."
To find the preregistration form and for additional information, visit bpsma.org/schools/health-services/vaccine-clinics.
Enterprise senior reporter Cody Shepard can be reached by email at cshepard@enterprisenews.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @cshepard_ENT.
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