During her first live one-on-one network interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized the need for teachers to be given priority when it comes to receiving COVID-19 vaccines.

Harris told Guthrie, “Teachers should be a priority. Teachers are critical to our children’s development. They should be able to teach in a safe place and expand the minds and the opportunities of our children. So teachers should be a priority along with other front-line workers, and we’re going to make them a priority.”

When asked, both times, if teachers are safe to return to school without being vaccinated, Harris responded that states have to decide as to whether they have the capacity to ensure the proper safety measures to include social distancing and masks. She further emphasized the key to ensuring those measures are in place is funding to states by way of Congress passing another Covid-19 relief package.

“They should be a priority. And the states are making decisions individually about where they will be on the list of who gets vaccinated.”

Harris said later in the interview, “It’s going to be safer for our schools to reopen when we can get our schools the infrastructure — helping them with their ventilation systems, helping them create social distancing with barriers, the things that are necessary to get them back open in a safe way.”

“Each day in the life of a child is a very long time. And that’s why we’ve got to collectively do everything in our power to reopen our schools as quickly as possible, as safely as possible.”