NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — With about two months left in the school year, prom season in high schools is quickly approaching.
And unlike last year, when proms were held virtually or scrapped all together, many schools this year are planning some type of in-person prom celebration.
There are also questions on whether students will have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus if they want to attend.
"There are some schools that are saying if you want to attend our prom you got to be vaccinated so we’re going to work with the schools to vaccinate the 16 and 17-year-olds," Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said Tuesday.
Proof of a negative COVID-19 test or vaccination is required for medium-sized proms or graduations -- between 200-500 people outdoors, 100-150 people indoors.
"It would be so easy not to have to ever worry about that testing to go to a prom or a graduation, and just get vaccinated," said Dr. Gale Burstein, Erie County's health commissioner.
High schoolers are getting that message now, because it takes over a month to be fully vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna shot, and roughly two weeks after getting Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine.
Your age will determine which vaccine applies to you.
We’ve heard from some school leaders who won’t mandate the vaccine.
"The New York State Department of Health is quite clear, and it is the intention that speaks safely to all school districts in Western New York. It’s the intention of school districts to follow it," said Michael Cornell, the president of the Erie-Niagara School Superintendents Association.
Added Mark Laurrie, the superintendent at Niagara Falls Schools: "It’s not something I would or suggest that we mandate, there’s a very simple way that we could support kids at graduation or an event like that and called testing."
As schools look toward the end of the school year, many eyes are on falling transmission rates of the virus locally.
If they fall far enough, high schoolers and middle schoolers may be able to return to in-person learning five days a week.
"We’ll just have to wait until the rate of transmission comes down or if the New York State Department of Health changes its guidance one of those two things would have to happen," Cornell said.
Down in Cattaraugus County, Dr. Kevin Watkins, the public health director there says the county’s transmission rates have fallen low enough for schools to consider whether to bring back middle and high schoolers.
Erie County has set up three "Teen Vaccine" clinics on May 1 at McKinley High School, SUNY ECC North and SUNY ECC South from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.