How lagging vaccination rates could keep Black students out of school
With some Bay Area school districts requiring students to get COVID-19 shots to return to class, Black students are being vaccinated at rates far below their peers, exacerbating long-standing racial disparities laid bare by the pandemic and raising fears that Black students could be disproportionately shut out of public school.
The vaccine gap is significant, according to an analysis of county health department data by this news organization: In five core Bay Area counties, 52 percent of Black students between the ages of 12 and 17 have received at least one shot compared with 85 percent of all students.
The reasons for the disparity are complex, rooted in decades of systemic discrimination and mistrust of the medical establishment. But the potential impact on Black students — who experts say already experienced disproportionate learning losses during California’s long school shutdowns — is clear.
“It would destabilize courses, it would destabilize future aspirations, it would destabilize learning,” said David Byrd, a Black music teacher in Oakland whose son is a freshman at Oakland High. “It’s going to ruin people’s education.”
As schools grapple with how to keep students safe even as the virus continues to circulate, critics of the local vaccine mandates worry they were approved too quickly and without adequate steps to address racial disparities. But proponents counter that vaccinations are the safest and quickest way to keep the largest number of students in classrooms — and to convince unvaccinated families to get the shots.
An analysis of vaccination numbers by age and race from county health departments and current population estimates from the state found that in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, Asian and White students have been vaccinated at much higher rates, with 95% and 74% of 12- to 17-year-olds respectively having received at least one shot. Among the region’s Latinos, 68 percent of young people have received a vaccination.
The rate among Black and multiracial students, by comparison, is lower than all other racial groups. In the counties with the largest Black populations, the disparities are particularly stark: Of Alameda County’s Black residents ages 12 to 17, about 44% have received the vaccine, compared to about 84% of the county’s overall age group. In Contra Costa, nearly 90% of 12- to 17-yearolds are vaccinated, but just 60% of Black students have gotten at least one shot.
Even in San Francisco, which has the region’s highest vaccination rate for that group overall, just 62% of Black teens are vaccinated, compared to about 87% of White kids and more than 95% of Asian kids.
School districts that have imposed their own mandates are scrambling to reach unvaccinated students before deadlines kick in later this fall or early next year. So far, Oakland Unified, West Contra Costa Unified and Piedmont Unified have imposed requirements that will force unvaccinated students to disenroll or attend online courses. Hayward Unified and Berkeley Unified also have mandates but will allow unvaccinated students to take weekly coronavirus tests.
With California’s first-inthe-nation school vaccination mandate likely to take effect over the summer and FDA approval last week of vaccines for children aged 5 to 11, more school districts will face similar challenges in getting unvaccinated families to change their minds.
‘Black people don’t want to be pushed aside’
Educators and public health experts — as well as Black parents and teens wrestling with whether to get the shots — say no one should be surprised that there’s uncertainty about the COVID vaccines in a community that has experienced generations of racism in a nation that allowed hundreds of Black men to go untreated for syphilis for decades in the infamous Tuskegee Study.
Victoria McGraw, a 16-year-old junior at Oakland Tech who is Black and of Hispanic descent, said that she initially didn’t want the vaccine after seeing that the J&J shot caused rare blood clots. Though she eventually got vaccinated at the insistence of her mother, a medical assistant, she said she and her grandparents discussed Tuskegee, particularly their fears that COVID vaccinations could prove to be another experiment on Black people.
“We don’t want a repeat of that years later,” McGraw said. “And if the government starts killing off Black people, getting justice for them will be really hard — they’ll get little to none.”
But since getting the vaccine, McGraw said her opinion has shifted.
“I don’t wanna come to school and give someone else COVID — it’s not fair to them,” she said. “If a lot of people don’t get their vaccines — people who play sports and stuff — it’s going to be very hard. We can’t risk losing half a squad or a team because somebody’s out sick, and it’s just gonna put people at risk.”
In San Pablo, 16-yearold Zebrea Wallace and her mother Zelon Harrison have spent weeks debating whether Wallace should get vaccinated or return to online school, where she said she risks losing focus.
“I’m scared about my grades. It was really, really so hard for me to stay in contact with my teachers and even get on Zoom,” said Wallace, a Richmond High School senior. “I like being with my teachers. I like being at school, I really do.”
Wallace’s family has experienced the worst of COVID-19. In July, she lost her father to the virus just a few months before her older brother became so sick he was placed in the intensivecare unit.
Three of Harrison’s eight children are now vaccinated, but she and Wallace are still on the fence.
“It’s super, super scary, because of what this country has done to Black people, to say, ‘Because science says so,’” Harrison said. “But Black people don’t want to be pushed aside because we didn’t get it.”
The lagging vaccination rates for Black teens mirror those for Black Californians at large. Statewide, roughly 60% of Black residents over 12 have had at least one dose, compared with about 81% of the overall eligible population.