Newsom orders COVID vaccines for eligible students, the first K-12 school mandate in nation [View all]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-01/newsom-sets-covid-vaccine-mandate-across-california-schools

In the first such action in the nation, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a mandate Friday requiring all eligible public and private schoolchildren in California to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a policy the state expects to affect millions of students. The mandate would take effect for grades 7 through 12 as soon as the semester following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of the vaccine for children ages 12 and older, Newsom said. Students in kindergarten through sixth grade would be phased in after the vaccine is formally approved for younger children.

The mandate could take effect for students 12 and older as early as January 2022 if there is full federal approval for a COVID-19 vaccine for that age range, the governor said in remarks at James Denman Middle School in San Francisco. “There’s still a struggle to get to where we need to be,” Newsom said about the effort to contain the pandemic. “And that means we need to do more, and we need to do better.” Individuals as young as 12 have been able to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine since May. The vaccine became widely available under emergency authorization for people age 16 and over last spring after early supply shortages eased, and received full approval from the FDA in late August. Children between 12 to 15 have been receiving the vaccine under emergency authorization in May.

Unlike other routine childhood vaccines, the governor’s plan would allow parents to cite personal beliefs in refusing to vaccinate their children against COVID-19. The personal belief exemption must be granted because the new vaccination requirement is being imposed through a regulatory process, rather than through the Legislature. State lawmakers can later decide to eliminate the personal belief exemption for the COVID-19 vaccine if they choose to do so.

Parents who don’t have a medical exemption nor submit a personal belief waiver will not be allowed to enroll students in in-person classes on campus unless they are vaccinated. Unvaccinated students will have the option of enrolling in a fully online school, attending independent-study programs offered by school districts or be homeschooled. It will be up to schools and school districts to enforce the mandate, as they do with other required vaccines, including those for hepatitis B, tetanus, mumps, measles, polio and chickenpox. The governor said he is simply applying the same standard for the COVID-19 vaccine.