L.A. requires vaccine for students 12 and up

LOS ANGELES >> 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. Culver City imposed a similar policy last month for its 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.

“LA Unified is leading because we must. Our communities cannot wait,” Mónica García, a board member, said before the vote.