SAN FRANCISCO — Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that California will mandate student vaccines for Covid-19 once federal officials fully approve the immunizations, becoming the first state to declare that requirement, though it likely will not take effect until next school year.
Under the plan, California will add Covid-19 vaccines to its list of immunizations required for school attendance in the first academic term after the Food and Drug Administration approves the shots for students in a given age band, split between grades 7-12 and K-6.
The governor's office estimates that middle- and high-schoolers will need to get vaccinated before the 2022-23 school year starts.Newsom's order bolsters California’s already robust collection of mandates intended to stymie the contagious Delta variant’s spread, including a mask requirement for students this year. The governor had already ordered state employees, health care workers and educators to either get vaccinated or test negative. Newsom touted California’s tougher rules en route to defeating a September recall vote that was initially spurred by frustration with lockdowns and school closures.
The student vaccine announcement comes as a growing number of California school districts have already passed student Covid-19 vaccine mandates as a condition of in-person instruction. Los Angeles Unified last month became the first major school district in the country to require students aged 12 and older to get vaccinated, a move that followed the much smaller Culver City Unified in the same county.
The FDA so far has only formally approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for people ages 16 and older. Other vaccines are available on emergency use authorizations, as is the Pfizer-BioNTech shot for children 12 to 15.
K-12 students returned to California classrooms full time in August after enduring some of the longest closures in the U.S. since coronavirus took hold in March 2010. The Delta variant has posed some quarantine challenges since the school year began, but California has avoided broad closures so far this school year. The Democratic governor has urged as many people as possible to get vaccinated, framing it as the only way to ensure that schools and businesses can remain open as the virus continues to circulate and mutate.
California has one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 in the nation, and Newsom has repeatedly contrasted the blue state with Republican-led ones like Florida and Texas that have been hit harder during the Delta variant surge.
Under the Newsom requirements, students could seek exemptions from the Covid-19 vaccine for medical and personal beliefs because it is not being mandated through legislation. Once the student mandate takes effect for a given age group, all school staff working with those students must also get vaccinated and will no longer have a test option.
Besides Los Angeles Unified, school districts elsewhere in California have adopted similar action, including Oakland, Piedmont, Hayward and, most recently, San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest school district. San Diego’s mandate, however, is limited to students aged 16 and up and goes into effect on Dec. 20.
The San Diego decision highlights the fact that federal regulators have formally approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine only for those ages 16 and older. Children aged 12-15 can get vaccinated under an emergency use authorization, but governments and school agencies have been hesitant to mandate shots until they are formally approved.
While federal regulators have not yet approved shots for children younger than 12, Pfizer and BioNTech this week submitted data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from trials of youths between ages 5-11.
California school districts are setting implementation dates often into early next year to allow time for federal regulators to fully approve the vaccinations for these age groups and for students to get vaccinated. Los Angeles, for example, is requiring students participating in extracurricular activities to be fully vaccinated by the end of this month, but the deadline for students in general is Dec. 19. Proof of vaccination must be uploaded into the district’s system by Jan. 10.=
Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.