The decision regarding the district's more than 600,000 students came in a 6-0 vote from school board members at a meeting on Thursday.
Despite today Dr. Fauci saying on CNN regarding natural immunity:
"I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that". School board members mandating vaccines is medical tyranny.
All children 12 and older in Los Angeles public schools must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by January to enter campus under an order approved Thursday by the Board of Education, the first such mandate among the nation’s largest school systems and a decision that triggered immediate pushback.
The requirement cements the standing of the L.A. Unified School District as an early adopter of COVID-19 school safety measures that are wide-reaching and aggressive. The nation’s second-largest school system has moved faster and more comprehensively than most others in testing all students and employees for coronavirus infection every week, requiring masks indoors and outdoors and ordering employees to get vaccinated.
L.A. schools Interim Supt. Megan K. Reilly said the student mandate was the next logical step to keep children, staff, and community members safer from a COVID-19 pandemic that still poses significant risks.
“We’ve always approached safety with a multilayered approach: masks, air filtration and coronavirus screening,” Reilly told The Times. “But we are seeing without a doubt that the vaccines are one of the clearest pathways to protecting individuals from getting severe sickness as well as for mitigating the transmission of the COVID virus. It is one of the best preventive measures that we have at our disposal to create a safe environment at schools.”
New York City’s school system, the largest in the nation, so far has ordered athletes in high-contact sports to begin the vaccination process before the competition starts. New York City and Chicago, the nation’s third-largest districts, are among a growing number of school systems that have enacted mandates for employees.
The L.A. district action “could provide the model for a comprehensive school response to COVID mitigation, so that schools can move on to student academic and mental health recovery plans,” said Odis Johnson Jr., executive director of the Center for Safe and Healthy Schools at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. “Mandatory vaccination mandates move us forward toward finally addressing students’ developmental, social and academic well-being.”
One vaccine, made by Pfizer, has received full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for people 16 and older. Those who are 12 to 15 can be inoculated under a federal emergency use authorization. L.A. Unified is not waiting for full vaccine approval for those 12 to 15 — although that approval by the FDA is widely expected in the coming weeks. And President Biden on Thursday pledged to expedite approval of the vaccine for younger children.
Reilly estimated that about 225,000 students in grades six through 12 would fall under the policy. District officials estimate that roughly 80,000 students are not yet vaccinated. Also affected would be about 17,000 students in independent charter schools that use L.A. Unified campuses.
Students who are not vaccinated by the deadline will not be allowed on campus, she said. The alternative for them would be to enter remote learning through independent study, a program that was overwhelmed at the start of the school year when more than 10,000 students signed up.
Under the district’s mandate, the first students affected would be those involved in any school-sponsored extracurricular activity, including sports, drama, chorus and band. Those students who are 12 or older must receive a first vaccine dose no later than Oct. 3 and a second dose no later than Oct. 31.
All students 12 and older would have to receive the first dose no later than Nov. 21 and a second dose no later than Dec. 19. The final day of classes before winter break is Dec. 17.
Students return to class on Jan. 11. By Jan. 10, proof of vaccination would have to be “uploaded and approved in LAUSD’s Daily Pass program” except for those students with approved exemptions, the proposal says.
The Daily Pass allows a student onto campus and tracks weekly coronavirus test results. Parents and students also use the pass to self-report whether a student has symptoms.
Vaccine exemptions can be requested for documented medical reasons, but not based on religious or personal beliefs, according to L.A. Unified.
The resolution also stipulates that younger students would have to receive their first vaccine dose no later than 30 days after their 12th birthday and their second dose no later than eight weeks after that birthday.
