Newsom said California would be first state in nation to require COVID-19 vaccines to attend K-12 school, but is silent amid reports his administration is abandoning that idea.
With the pandemic emergency quickly winding down, California officials appear to have quietly backed away from plans to require COVID-19 vaccinations for K-12 school students, a move that avoids the prospect of barring tens of thousands of unvaccinated children from the classroom.Gov.
“I don’t know how we’d be able to track a vaccine that’s given yearly, that’s what it comes down to,” Volta said. “It’s one thing to have vaccinations by 8th grade, but a yearly vaccination? Oh, that would be a challenge to follow up on. And not to mention families being told they can’t come to school because you don’t have this vaccination?”
state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, announced he was pulling his bill that would have not only mandated COVID-19 vaccination to attend K-12 schools but eliminated personal belief exemptionsSAN JOSE, CA – NOVEMBER 4: Alejandra Luna, 10, receives a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine dose from Registered Nurse Shari Hamrick, as her mother Maria Resendiz and sister Paola Luna, 9, look on at a clinic on the campus of Katherine R. Smith Elementary School in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.
Either way, the bills proved problematic. In cases where parents successfully sued to block district-level COVID-19 vaccine mandates, courts have ruled that the Legislature vested the CDPH, not local school boards, with that authority.