LA to require vaccine for all students 12 and up

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Board of education voted Thursday to require students 12 and older to be vaccinated against the Coronavirus to attend in-person classes in the nation’s second-largest school district.

The move makes Los Angeles by far the largest of a very small number of districts with a vaccine requirement. Nearby Culver City imposed a similar policy last month for its 7,000 students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which has more than 600,000 mostly Latino students, already tests all students and employees every week, requires masking indoors and outdoors and has ordered employees to be vaccinated. Under the vaccination plan, students 12 and up who participate in sports and other extracurricular activities need to get their two-shot sequence completed by the end of October. Others have until Dec. 19.

“It is easy to wait for someone to tell us what to do. LA Unified is leading because we must. Our communities cannot wait,” Mónica García, a Board member, said before the overwhelming vote in favor of the move.

“This action is not about violating anybody’s rights. This action is about doing our job to be able to offer public schools that children can come to school and be safe,” she said.

Los Angeles Unified was among the last of the nation’s largest districts to reopen to classroom instruction last spring. The teachers union opposed the move for months, citing health concerns.

The district’s student population is nearly three-quarters Latino and many are poor. Among adults, poor Latinos are vaccinated at a lower rate than the state average.