In the first such move of its kind in the nation, a school district in Los Angeles has ordered all students over the age of 12 to take a coronavirus vaccine in order to return to school, as reported by the Daily Caller.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Board of Education passed the mandate by a unanimous 6-0 vote. The policy, officially titled the “Superintendent’s Resolution Requesting The Board of Education of the Los Angeles Unified School District to Require COVID-19 Vaccination for Eligible Students,” will be implemented for the 2021-2022 academic year.
The L.A. Board of Education encompasses approximately 600,000 Pre-K through 12th grade students across 1,200 schools in the entire district. As justification for the policy, the board claimed, without evidence, that hospitalization rates are 10 times higher among the unvaccinated than the vaccinated. The new policy orders all students to take at least one shot by November 21st, and to receive a second shot by December 19th.
In response to the new mandate, a sizeable majority of parents have criticized the board’s decision and have threatened to pull their students out of public schools in the district. According to board member Nick Melvoin, about 60 percent of parents who have contacted him over the decision were against the mandate; Melvoin admitted that the new mandate could push students out of the district altogether, in favor of private schools that have not implemented such vaccine mandates.
There are already threats of legal action against the board in response to the mandate, with the group Reopen California Schools vowing to sue the district over the legality of the policy; the group also raised questions about the efficiency of the vaccine itself, pointing to thousands of confirmed “breakthrough infections,” where individuals who have already been vaccinated still caught the virus.
Even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has admitted that the vaccines should not be given to children between the ages of 12 and 15. Public health expert Vinay Prasad admitted that the vaccines can cause young men to develop a heart condition known as myocarditis. Prasad tweeted that if children in that age range get vaccinated, then they should “accept one dose,” since “the second dose is going to bring a lot of myocarditis. More is at stake than just this one vaccine.”