The Iberia Parish School District recently received 100 vaccines for COVID-19 from Iberia Medical Center.

Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Joseph said at Wednesday night’s school board meeting that IMC contacted the district on New Year’s Eve to inform them that 100 vaccines were available for employees of the district.

“What a good challenge to have to get a call from Iberia Medical Center that they have 100 vaccines ready at a time when we’re all on vacation,” Joseph said.

Not knowing the response they would get, Joseph said the administration targeted small groups to see what the response would be. The vaccines were offered to administrators, pre-K teachers, kindergarten teachers and first- and second-grade teachers due to the fact that those employees teach children who do not have a mask requirement.

Speech pathologists and aids for special education were also offered the vaccination.

“We have more available so we will be targeting high school for the next step,” Joseph said.

Joseph said a survey was conducted where more than 300 employees expressed interest in taking the vaccine.

“We are hopeful to fill any slot given to us,” Joseph said. “We’ll take what’s given and move forward.”

In other business, School Board President Elvin Pradia was re-elected as board president for the first school board meeting of the year.

Board member Dan LeBlanc was elected as vice-president and board member Jay McDonald was elected second vice-president.

“Hopefully we can work together again as we’ve done in the past,” Pradia said after thanking the board for his re-election. “I’m looking for this to be a brighter year than 2020.”