Black, Latino vaccine hesitancy persists
Thousands of Bay Area school kids still don't have their COVID-19 shots despite looming school vaccine mandates, provoking uncertainty among school leaders and fear in parents about how the requirements could impact longand short-term learning for unvaccinated students.
Despite efforts to boost vaccination numbers across the region since last fall, Black and Latino teens ages 12 and up remain less likely to be vaccinated for the virus than their White and Asian classmates, a Bay Area News Group (a sister news organization) analysis of data from local school districts and public health departments found.
Vaccination rates for Black students range from 47-63%, depending on the school district, well below the overall rates. Latino student vaccination rates are also lagging, but less so, ranging from 49-80%. Asian students have the highest vaccination rates across the counties, at 85% and up, and White students are between 64% and 80% vaccinated.
Tyrone Howard, a professor of education in the School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA, said it would be a mistake to move ahead with vaccine mandates in schools where a disproportionate number of Black and Brown students lack the shots. Moving those students into online schooling programs with fewer resources would result in unjust segregation, he said.
“We might see tens of thousands of students who are not going to be allowed to go to school,” said Howard, whose research involves race, culture, access and educational opportunities for minority student populations.
There's no clear answer for how to close the gaps. The imposition of vaccine mandates hasn't worked, and many have now been delayed. School districts and counties haven't succeeded by ramping up vaccination sites and offering incentives.And educational campaigns to combat mistrust in the jabs haven't been successful at increasing vaccination rates much past the halfway mark for Black students.
It's likely many of them won't have their shots by the time their school's deadline arrives — or a statewide vaccination mandate for all students in grades 7-12 takes effect, perhaps as early as this summer, said Alex Stack, a spokesperson from Gov. Gavin Newsom's press office. Newsom said last fall that his timeline depends on the federal Food and Drug Administration granting full approval of the vaccines for children ages 12-15, as it has for youth ages 16 and up.
School districts that don't want to impose the state's mandate then will be in a bind: If they defy the immunization requirements, they could be at risk of losing state funding. But if they follow the rules, unvaccinated students would have to disenroll from school and compete for scarce remotelearning resources.
The current numbers are so discouraging that two of the East Bay's largest districts — West Contra Costa Unified and Oakland Unified — postponed student vaccine mandates that were due to take effect in January and February.
Those mandates are designed to keep students, teachers and staff safe from catching or spreading the virus. But many parents say they feel that forcing their children to get the shots is unnecessary, unsafe and goes against their personal beliefs. Oakland's mandate includes a religious belief exemption, but West Contra Costa does not.
Although Newsom said the state's vaccine mandate will include a personal belief exemption, that could be moot if proposed legislation by Sen. Richard Pan is approved. Pan's bill would add COVID shots to the list of required childhood vaccinations, and like the rules for those other vaccinations, would not include an exemption. Pan's bill would not take effect until January 2023 if approved.
West Contra Costa parents and caregivers Stella Miranda, Venessa McGhee and Mireya Almanza are part of a larger group of parents of kids in the districts calling themselves “Families Against Mandates.”
“All parents should be entitled to feel how they want about the vaccine and have the right to decide whether to get their children vaccinated,” McGhee said.
Other parents said they should have the right to send their kids to a school where they don't have to sit next to a student who isn't vaccinated and threatens their family's safety.
Elise Cecaci, a member of the East Oakland Collaborative who is trying to combat vaccine hesitancy among Black parents in her own community, enrolled her son in Oakland Unified's Sojourner Truth Independent Study program after unenrolling him from Northern Light, a local private school, to keep her son and her family safe from the virus.
“We have pretty much been removed from everybody and are very aggressively trying to not expose anybody or be exposed,” Cecaci said. But she said she's unsatisfied with the online program and disappointed that the district hasn't put the resources to build it up despite increased demand from parents who want to keep their kids home and away from unvaccinated students.
The West Contra Costa school board put the district's Feb. 18 vaccine mandate on temporary hold after finding that more than 5,000 of the 12,430 kids ages 12 and up had still not notified the district of their vaccination status — 57% of students. Only 40% of Black students have submitted proof of vaccination. The school board will meet again Feb. 16 to decide on a new deadline.
In Oakland Unified, about 35% of the district's 15,160 kids 12 and up have not submitted COVID vaccination records. Only 43% of Black students and 45% of Pacific Islander students have reported receiving their shots. The numbers are slightly higher among Native American kids at 56%, and 68% for Latino students. 84% of White and Asian kids have submitted the records.
Faced with the prospect of having to push out thousands of students of color who haven't met the requirement, the Oakland school board postponed its student vaccine mandate from Jan. 31 to Aug. 1.
“They would not let so many students end up with the threat of being unenrolled from in-person school for being unvaccinated, not enrolling in independent study, and not having an exemption,” said John Sasaki, a spokesman for Oakland Unified.
The vaccination rates at West Contra Costa and Oakland are dismal compared to nearby Piedmont Unified, where more than 97% of all students 12 and up are fully vaccinated. The district imposed a vaccine mandate at the end of last year, but dropped it Jan. 26, because of the high vaccination numbers, and to keep kids who aren't vaccinated learning in classrooms rather than forcing them into an independent study program, Superintendent Randall Booker wrote in a Jan. 27 letter to parents. The district was also facing a lawsuit over the mandate from two anti-vaccination groups and two Piedmont parents.
Hayward Unified and Berkeley Unified also have vaccine mandates but offer students a vaccine-or-test option. At Hayward Unified about 70% of students have submitted proof of vaccination. Among Black students, 57% had submitted proof. Berkeley did not provide information on student vaccine rates.
Student social-emotional well-being is a concern for kids who don't have the vaccine. Kids who won't be able to attend in-person learning due to mandates could lose connection to their school communities, teachers and classmates, extracurriculars and miss out on crucial academic benefits offered in the classroom.
“We saw the beginning of the pandemic and it's not good for Black and Brown students,” Howard said. “It's a 2.0 version of separate and unequal.”
Despite the difficulties, Bay Area local health departments, physicians, community activists and others are still plowing forward to combat vaccine hesitancy. California has invested $25 million to build integrated teams of county health and education officials and is offering support with schoolbased vaccine clinics and events.
In Santa Clara County, for example, a county health department team is working on building trust and education about COVID vaccines in Latino communities, particularly in East Side Union High School and Gilroy Unified school districts. They are promoting the vaccine on Telemundo and bilingual radio shows, hosting promotional giveaways at local department stores and launching mobile vaccine hubs in the least vaccinated communities.
“For many people, what's on their mind is `What's the added point of a booster if I just got infected or what's the point of getting the vaccine?'” said Monika Roy, an assistant health officer.
The school districts there aren't tracking student vaccination data, but county data shows that Black, Latino and Native American kids ages 5-17 are the least likely to have gotten the shots.