Schools in Milton Keyes should not reopen unless staff have been given access to the vaccine, the council leader has told MKFM.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has signalled pupils could be told in a week's time if they will be returning to classrooms after the February half-term.
This timeframe was initially discussed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson when the nation went into a third lockdown, saying it was his hope that schools might begin to open after the school holiday.
However "one of the key criteria" as to whether schools reopen to all pupils will be whether the pressure on the NHS has started to lift. Currently, hospital admissions are still high, so it arguably may be too early to tell.
Since the pandemic began, parents and school staff have been sharing their concerns about how safe schools actually are. Gavin Williamson just this week insisted that schools are "are a safe environment to be in".
But Cllr Pete Marland, the Leader of Milton Keynes Council, believes that schools have always been a "problem". He says that schools have always been "big areas of transmission", and that the new and more transmissible variant makes it worse.
This is why Cllr Marland believes schools should not open until it is "safe", or there is a vaccine. He said: "I don't think the council will be able to recommend to schools, because it's ultimately their decision, that they should reopen unless staff have access to a vaccine.
"Just common sense would tell you it is not particularly fair to put people, who are working, into an environment where they may be at risk without full knowledge of what that risk is. Either the Government should make the vaccine available to teachers before schools reopen, or they have to show the evidence that schools are safe [and] to provide that reassurance to parents and staff."
Cllr Marland announced that Milton Keynes Council is pushing for more people to be added to the Government's priority vaccination lists. These include frontline workers, including school staff and construction workers, for example.
Teaching unions are calling on school staff to be higher up the priority list too. A spokesperson for the NASUWT union said that school staff should be treated the same as frontline workers during the vaccine rollout.
The National Education Union (NEU) this week claimed that there are "much higher COVID rates of infection amongst teachers and other school staff than for the general population".
But Gavin Williamson disputed the NEU's assertion and insisted schools "are a safe environment to be in".
"What the evidence has been is that teachers are no more vulnerable than any other workforce," he added.
