The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today vaccinations should not be a prerequisite for returning students to campus.
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FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
Students work on after-school enrichment lessons at Rio Vista Elementary School on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021, in El Monte, California. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
California schools can safely move to reopen, Newsom says
LOS ANGELES Gov. Gavin Newsom said he believes California schools can begin to reopen even if all teachers are not yet vaccinated against Covid-19, provided that proper safety measures and supports are in place although some teachers unions, including United Teachers Los Angeles, have said vaccinations should be a prerequisite to resuming in-person instruction.
“We can safely reopen schools as we process a prioritization to our teachers of vaccinations,” Newsom said Wednesday.
The battle over reopening California schools intensified Wednesday when Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration said campuses can safely reopen without teachers being vaccinated and unions pushed back, calling for school workers to be immunized as part of any sweeping reopening effort to return students to classrooms.
Echoing the debate, the Southern California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics called for schools to open immediately, asserting that the harms of keeping children out of school outweigh the risks of reopening. Meanwhile, United Teachers Los Angeles accused officials of playing politics with the lives of its members, students and their families.
Public education’s two afflictions: COVID-19 and teachers unions
Americans believe K-12 education is so important that laws almost everywhere require children from about age 5 to 17 to attend school five days a week, eight months a year. Public school teachers insist that they are essential workers. Remote learning during the pandemic has proved that in-person teaching, especially for the lower grades, is essential to learning, which includes socialization. And three Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, say “there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”