California will add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of those already required for children to attend schools once federal regulators fully approve the shots for their age groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday.
Speaking at a school in San Francisco where he was joined by San Francisco Unified Superintendent Vincent Matthews and state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, Newsom said he believes California is leading the country as the first state to announce such a requirement, and predicted it won’t be the last.
“We’re leaning forward,” Newsom said. “We want to end this pandemic. We are all exhausted by it.”
Newsom said the requirement will become effective in the next school term as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves they vaccine for different age groups, starting either Jan. 1 or July 1, “whichever come sooner.” It will be implemented in phases, the first for grades 7-12, the second kindergarten through 6th grade.
The FDA granted emergency use authorization, an expedited process, for Pfizer’s two-shot vaccine for ages 16 and older in December and for ages 12 and older in May. In August, the FDA granted full formal approval of the Pfizer shots for ages 16 and older after the company provided evidence from more extensive trials demonstrating its safety and efficacy.
Pfizer last month submitted preliminary trial results to the FDA for the vaccine’s use at a third of the dosage in children ages 5-11, and said it would apply for emergency use authorization for that age group in coming weeks. The similar Moderna and the one-shot Johnson & Johnson shots remain under emergency use authorization only for adults ages 18 and older.
Newsom said the statewide vaccine requirement does not prevent school districts from moving forward with their own requirements sooner.
A number of school districts already have required their eligible students 12 and older to get the vaccine, starting with Culver City Unified in Los Angeles County which adopted a policy in August. Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, followed with a similar policy last month.
Since then, four Bay Area districts also adopted student vaccine mandates — Oakland, Hayward, Piedmont and West Contra Costa Unified.
But although they have won overwhelming approval among school trustees, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been controversial. West Contra Costa Unified’s policy was opposed by one of the five board members and about half of the parents who spoke at Thursday’s meeting.
Trustee Jamela Smith-Folds, who voted against the mandate, wanted the district to allow weekly COVID-19 testing as an alternative for students who don’t get vaccinated, a move other board members argued differed little from current policy.
Among parents, some who supported a COVID-19 vaccine mandate argued that schools already require students to receive a host of vaccines, while others countered that they resented having their children forced to receive the shots.
Fremont Unified School District Superintendent CJ Cammack said Friday he will review the details of Newsom’s plan and “we will be prepared” to implement it.
California already requires children entering transitional kindergarten or kindergarten to be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, polio, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. Those are administered in a series of two to five shots through childhood depending on the vaccine, and are checked again to enter 7th grade.
Under a controversial 2015 state law, California eliminated an allowance for “personal belief” exemptions to those vaccine requirements, following a measles outbreak at Disneyland. Only medical restrictions can qualify a child attending public or private school for exemption from those required vaccines.
But that law doesn’t cover the new COVID-19 vaccines, and Newsom said that personal and religious belief exemptions will be allowed, at least for now, as well as medical exemptions. Newsom said the requirement also would apply to teachers and school staff in the first phase of its implementations for higher grades. California in August required that school teachers and staff be vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19.
Newsom has cast himself as a national leader in aggressive orders to fight the virus, starting with the country’s first statewide stay-home order in March 2020. His orders leading to slower reopening of schools and businesses than other states fueled frustration among many parents and business owners that helped propel a vote on whether to recall him from office last month.
But Newsom, a Democrat, campaigned by touting a series of other first-in-the-country moves — requiring masks indoors at schools as they reopened in the fall, vaccines or tests for teachers and state employees — and pointed to outbreaks in Republican-led states without such rules to argue he was protecting Californians. Voters rejected the recall two to one.
Staff Writer Joseph Geha contributed to this report.
Check back for updates on this developing story.