Calif. to require approved vaccines for all students
SAN FRANCISCO – California will enact the nation's first coronavirus vaccine mandate for schoolchildren, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, aiming to have all students in seventh through 12th grades vaccinated by next fall once the shots gain final federal approval for everyone 12 and over.
The Democratic governor said he expects the U.S. government to give that final sign-off sometime next year, bumping up from the emergency authorization given now for those 12 to 15.
He said the state will require students in kindergarten through sixth grades to get the vaccine once final federal approval comes for children 5 to 11.
“We have to do more,” Newsom said during a news conference at a San Francisco middle school after visiting with some seventh-graders. “We want to end this pandemic. We are all exhausted by it.”
A handful of school districts have imposed their own vaccine mandates, including five in California. But other states have resisted imposing pandemic rules on schools, including a new law in Kentucky that overturned a statewide mask mandate.
Newsom has been one of the most aggressive governors on coronavirus restrictions, issuing the nation's first statewide stay-at-home order in March 2020 and more recently requiring California's roughly 2.2 million health care workers to get vaccinated to keep their jobs.
The governor seems to have been emboldened after easily defeating a recall effort last month fueled by anger over his handling of the pandemic. He says he interpreted his landslide victory as an endorsement of his vaccine policies.
Newsom hasn't endorsed all vaccine mandates, however, recently opposing a similar requirement for prison guards that a federal judge imposed. Critics used that example to say Newsom is driven more by politics than science, noting the labor union of corrections officers had donated to his campaign to defeat the recall.
“California kids made the mistake of not giving millions to his campaigns,” Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who ran to replace Newsom during the recall election, tweeted Friday.