The Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine will be available for Northern Lehigh School District employees starting Friday at the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit #21 in Schnecksville.

Director Gale Husack, who serves as the district’s representative to the CLIU, shared the details at Monday’s school board meeting.

“The CLIU has been directly tasked with coordinating and developing and managing the registration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that is coming out,” Husack said. “The vaccines will be able to be distributed to our districts beginning on Friday.”

Husack said it includes not only Northern Lehigh, but 14 of the Carbon Lehigh districts that the IU services including CCTI, LCTI, some charter schools and the nonpublic schools.

“There is a third party coming in to do that vaccination process, but the registration is out there so I wanted to take the time,” she said. “It really was an extensive process that went into place to register all of these teachers, all of the staff; really appreciate our administration here at Northern Lehigh for taking the time and coming in over the weekend to make sure that our teachers get the vaccinations that they deserve and need, and all of those really great things to get us moving back in the right direction.

“So thank you to the folks at the IU for helping that and our staff, our teachers, our administration here for making that a very successful opportunity coming our way to get us all back from COVID-19.”

Superintendent Matthew J. Link noted the vaccinations will begin Friday afternoon at the CLIU 21 campus.

“With NLSD’s first-round allocation, we are able to vaccinate almost all education workers that want it in Peters Elementary, Slatington Elementary and Northern Lehigh Middle School,” Link said. “Those that we were not able to get to, which is really just a handful of people in those three buildings, and then people in the high school, district office, and any sort of contracted employees that have not yet received it, we will look to get those people their vaccinations over the next few weeks.”

Link added, “We have not yet been notified when the second allocation will be made available, but are being told all education workers will have access by the end of March/early April.

“Again, I would like to acknowledge the administrative team at CLIU because the work that they have turned around really in less than a week has been nothing short of a miracle, and I would also like to specifically thank (Sherri) Molitoris and (Rhonda) Frantz for assisting in this rollout to ensure that it goes well for our employees here.”