The same day that the Los Angeles Unified school board will discuss whether to postpone enforcement of its COVID-19 vaccination mandate for students, elected officials are scheduled to vote on a proposal to expand both its staff and student vaccination mandates to include all district-authorized charter schools.
L.A. Unified currently authorizes 277 charter schools, of which 51 are affiliated with the district while another 226 are considered “independent” schools with their own governing bodies, but which still must rely on the LAUSD school board to approve their charters.
“Based on ongoing assessment of state and local conditions, risk factors and statistics regarding the pervasive impact of COVID-19 including emerging variants, it is critical that the student and employee vaccine mandate expands to include all LAUSD authorized charter schools,” district staff wrote in a report to the board, which is expected to vote on the proposal Tuesday, Dec. 14.
“The goal of public safety, including the safety of those in school communities, is to be reached by implementing comprehensive and uniform school-wide, District-wide and community-wide measures to ensure the safety of students and employees within our teaching and learning environments,” the report goes on to say.
It’s critical, the report states, that vaccination policies be consistent throughout the community, since students transfer between LAUSD and non-district schools and some families have children enrolled in both types of schools.
Under district policy, students 12 and older, with limited exceptions, must be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Until last week, district officials had insisted that students must comply before the start of second semester in January.
But officials are reconsidering the deadline.
Both the possible delay in enforcing the student mandate as well as a proposal to extend the district’s vaccination mandates to include all LAUSD-authorized charter schools are listed under the same agenda item.
The vaccination mandates already apply to charter schools that operate on a district site. This week’s proposal would expand the policies so that they would apply to all other charter schools authorized by the LAUSD school board, including ones that don’t operate on district properties.
It was unclear Monday how many additional charter schools — and, for that matter, how many more school employees and students — would be impacted by the mandates should the LAUSD board extend its policies. The vaccination requirement would apply to contractors and other adults who provide services on campuses as well.
Ricardo Soto, the California Charter Schools Association’s general counsel, indicated in a statement that the association supports extending the vaccination mandates to more schools.
“The fast-spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus, and the recent surge in COVID cases since Thanksgiving, is yet another reminder that we need to work together to ensure L.A.’s public school campuses are safe, and kids are ready to learn,” he stated.
“COVID-19 vaccines and boosters have been shown to be safe and effective,” Soto added. “I hope that all who are medically able will choose to be vaccinated, it is an important tool in our toolkit to bring an end to this terrible pandemic and keep students in schools and mitigate further learning loss.”
If the school board extends the mandates, district officials would obtain input from charter school operators to establish a timeline for when their employees would have to be fully vaccinated, the district said in the staff report.
School employees who work for LAUSD or for charter schools that already must comply with the mandate were to have received their second COVID-19 vaccine dose by Nov. 15. Nearly 500 LAUSD employees were fired last week for failure to comply with the mandate, and additional firings or settlements are expected in the future.
As for the student vaccination mandate, 86.5% of students 12 and older attending LAUSD schools appeared on track to comply with the requirement as of last week, the district reported.
But that still leaves more than 30,000 students who have yet to provide proof of compliance and who potentially could be forced to transfer to City of Angels, the district’s online independent study program, if they’re not fully vaccinated by the start of second semester in January.
The logistical nightmare of enrolling such a large load of students to City of Angels — a program that’s already struggling to provide services to the more than 16,000 students currently enrolled there — has been top of mind for many.
In announcing that officials will consider holding off on enforcing its student mandate, the district never said explicitly it had to do with the high volume of students who have yet to comply. But many — including an attorney representing families opposed to the mandate — have claimed that’s exactly the reason officials are reconsidering forcing students to transfer to the independent study program in January.
Instead, the district framed the upcoming board discussion about pushing back the enforcement deadline in a more positive way, saying it’s in response to the already high vaccination rate.
“Supporting families who may not have had access to the COVID-19 vaccines, or who have not received information enabling them to make an informed choice about vaccinations, remains the top priority for Los Angeles Unified,” the staff report to the board states. “Accordingly, the District is delaying the transfer of students to online independent study instruction until the beginning of the Fall semester 2022.”
Tuesday’s discussion is scheduled for the board’s 2 p.m. meeting. Parents opposed to the mandate are expected to rally outside the district office during the meeting.