It’s not considered a mandate if you allow the testing options.”

Thomas Kenworthy, Portsmouth superintendent of schools

PORTSMOUTH — By Dec. 1, teachers and all other employees of the Portsmouth school district must submit proof of being vaccinated against COVID-19. If they don’t, they will need to present a negative COVID test on a weekly basis.

That’s according to a decision by Superintendent Thomas Kenworthy, who stopped short of calling it a vaccine mandate as is the case in Barrington, Little Compton and a few other districts.

“We’ve been advised along the way by legal counsel. It’s not considered a mandate if you allow the testing options,” Kenworthy said Tuesday. 

The Barrington School Committee voted through a full vaccine mandate for teachers in August and last week moved close to firing three unvaccinated teachers. 

In a 3-1 vote, the committee called for the three teachers — Brittany DiOrio, Kerri Thurber and Stephanie Hines — to be placed on unpaid leave for the next two months. If the teachers do not follow the district’s mandate and get the Covid-19 vaccine in that time, they will be terminated. The teachers requested religious exemptions from the district’s vaccine mandate, but Barrington Superintendent of Schools Michael Messore denied their requests. 

Kenworthy, however, said he doesn’t anticipate the issue to be as contentious here because the rule is different in Portsmouth.

“I think that’s why we went with the testing option,” he said.

There are about seven school districts in Rhode Island that either have a full vaccination mandate or, like in Portsmouth, require negative test results if employees don’t receive the vaccine, he said. In Portsmouth, the weekly test rule will kick in for any employee who lets the Dec. 1 deadline lapse without proof of vaccination.

All employees have been updated on the new rule and a secure system has been put in place to make it easy to submit proof of vaccination or a negative test result, Kenworthy said.

The decision was his alone, he added. 

“We’ve been talking about it since the summer, and on the advice of the School Department attorney, it wasn’t necessarily anything the School Committee had to vote on. It’s not a district policy — we didn’t go that route,” he said, adding that he’s been continually updating the committee on the matter.

Although about 90 percent of all educators in the state are vaccinated, according to the R.I. Department of Education, Kenworthy said he believes more than 92 percent of all district employees in Portsmouth have received the vaccine thus far.