The Los Angeles Board of Education was to vote on Thursday on a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for all children age 12 and older in the second-largest school district in the United States.
The meeting http://laschoolboard.org/9-9-21SpclBD was set for 2 p.m. PDT (2100 GMT) with a session for the public to comment to the board, which has previously been sued over its COVID-19 precautions. About 2,000 people a day test positive for the coronavirus in Los Angeles County.
Most board members have already indicated they support the measure, the Los Angeles Times reported, meaning Los Angeles is poised to be the first large school district in the country to mandate vaccines for students 12 and over.
With a COVID-19 surge fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant, school districts are facing challenges, including sickened teachers, as they create policies around the politically charged topics of vaccines and masking.
Children represented about a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States in the week ending Sept. 2, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
More than 600,000 students attend schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which already has masking, coronavirus-testing and ventilation requirements in its roughly 1,200 schools. The board previously mandated all employees without exemptions be vaccinated.
The board's proposal is that all students age 12 and older who have chosen to return in-person to schools must have received their first vaccine dose by Nov. 12 unless they have a valid medical or religious exemption. The mandate does not apply to a small minority of students who have opted to remain home for virtual learning.
At least one, albeit much smaller, school district has already put a vaccine mandate in place for students: neighboring Culver City Unified School District announced the requirement last month.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in May that children ages 12-15 can receive the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine previously approved to those 16 and over, but authorization for children younger than 12 has not yet been granted.
In New York City, the nation's largest school district, staff at public schools are already required to be vaccinated, but not children, who begin classes on Monday.
"We just don't think that's the right thing to do," Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Thursday, saying his priority was getting children back in school. "If there's a family that's not yet ready, I don't want that family kept out of school."
About 65% of the city's children 12 years and older have received their first vaccine dose, the mayor said, and many schools will have vaccination stations on site.
In Florida, a judge ruled this week that the state cannot enforce a ban on public school mask mandates while the issue makes it way through the courts.
Of the Florida districts that report COVID-19 cases in the school system, infections this academic year appear higher than they were last year, said Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar. "And in most cases they're higher this year in the first 3 or 4 weeks than they were all of last year," he added.
"One of the things we want to see is a stronger push on getting people vaccinated," Spar said.
In addition, schools must also focus on mitigation measures such as strict social distancing, small class sizes and universal masking where possible, health experts said.
"Unless we can open up schools safely with full mitigation measures, we're really putting everyone at risk," Sara Bode, a pediatrician and committee member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health, said in an interview.
