Los Angeles Unified School District to vote on mandatory Covid-19 vaccines for eligible students

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“We imagine that by the second semester our middle and high school campuses will be absolutely even safer than they are today,” LAUSD school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin told John Thursday morning. CNN’s Berman.

According to a report included with an online copy of Thursday’s agenda, all students aged 12 or older and attending school in person should have received their first dose by November 21 and be fully immunized. before December 19. Students participating in extracurricular activities in person should be fully immunized by the end of October.

The report states that “students with qualified and approved exemptions and conditional admissions” would be excluded from the mandate, but it does not provide further details on potential exemptions.

LAUSD, which serves more than 600,000 students and started school on August 16, would be the first major school district in the United States to impose Covid-19 vaccines on its eligible students. A smaller Los Angeles County district, Culver City Unified School District, announced in August that it plans to require eligible students to be vaccinated by mid-November.

LAUSD estimates that at least 150,000 doses will need to be administered if the requirement is approved, Franklin said, but Los Angeles County has the doses and the capacity to undertake the effort.

Students who refuse to be vaccinated but do not have an exemption can enroll in the District Independent Studies Program, an online resource that already has around 15,000 students who have opted for this learning option for various reasons, Franklin said.

The district “is trying to do everything in our power to keep our schools safe,” Franklin said, including instituting the wearing of masks, testing and upgrading school air filtration systems.

“Cases are on the increase and children are exposed to the Delta variant in a way that we did not see last semester,” she said, “and our responsibility to children and our communities is theirs. safety and well-being “.

Pfizer / BioNTech’s vaccine is the only vaccine available in the United States approved for emergency use for children between the ages of 12 and 15, although the vaccine has received full approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration. for people aged 16 and over.

But that’s not a problem for the LAUSD school board, Franklin told CNN, saying, “We understand that the benefits far outweigh the risks, and therefore emergency clearance doesn’t really weigh in our decision. ”

“It’s about access,” she added, “and that we can provide it in this country for our children, and we want to do it as quickly as possible.”

Board member Jackie Goldberg said the mandate was to “save lives,” CNN affiliate KCBS / KCAL reported.

“This is why there is no measles, mumps and rubella in our schools – because we vaccinate and we need it.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki praised the move Thursday, telling CNN: “Good for them.” But she also said it was important for everyone around the students to be vaccinated as well to protect students under the age of 12 who remain ineligible for vaccines.

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