Governor Requires Vaccinations Or Testing of PUSD, State School Workers

Looks like PUSD teachers will have to get vaccinated or take weekly tests after all.

Gov. Gavin Newsom today announced a statewide policy requiring all school teachers and employees in the state to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or submit to weekly testing.

Newsom’s announcement comes on the heels of calls from local parents and elected officials for the PUSD school board to require vaccinations.

Despite the calls, the item never came up for a vote by the school board.

The Delta variant is more contagious than Delta prime and more cities are reporting an increase in cases among children. Those numbers are expected to rise as schools open across the country.

On Tuesday, school board member Tina Fredericks called for a special meeting today for a vote on mandatory vaccinations.

Fredericks has been the most outspoken board member on the matter.

“While it has been reported that PUSD has a 96% vaccination rate of its employees,” Fredericks said at a press conference on Tuesday, “that still means 89 employees are unvaccinated. A 96% vaccination rate is irrelevant to the 2,225 elementary students or more who will be assigned to schools or classrooms with unvaccinated personnel.  An elementary school student who ends up with an unvaccinated teacher will share space, share air with that teacher five days a week, six hours a day.”

“That is the reality that parents here at Willard Elementary and 13 other PUSD elementary schools have to face.  This is my reality, too, with a daughter under 12 years old.”

Other parents also said they were concerned about the unvaccinated teachers.

“I was speaking with (PUSD) Board Member Jennifer Lee yesterday, and she was advocating that PUSD is 95% vaccinated, but I wasn’t concerned about the 95, I was concerned about the five,” said parent Julie Schneiderman.

“I wanted  her to give me some reassurance that one of the five percent unvaccinated  teachers would not be one of my children’s teachers,” she continued, .and I could not get confirmation that one of those staff members would not be (in a classroom) with my elementary schoolchildren, and they’re in there, eight hours a day, five days a week.”

Newsom’s  decision makes California the first state in the nation to implement such a sweeping requirement.

The vaccination-or-testing requirement already has the support of the powerful Service Employees International Union, which represents thousands of school workers across the state.

“We share Governor Newsom’s commitment to increasing the rate of vaccination so we can better protect the students and families we serve from sickness and death, and prevent the virus from spreading to our own families and communities, and we support public health measures such as this which are designed to do so while giving workers a choice,” said Max Arias, an executive board member of SEIU California. “Worker-led school safety protocols have created the model for safe school reopening, and many school workers have already created similar agreements.”

Newsom has come under some fire from some groups for another statewide school mandate — mask-wearing.

“We want to keep our kids safe,” Newsom said. “We want them back in person for in-person instruction. We don’t want our kids back on Zoom school. We don’t want our kids back online with all the disparities that were self-evident in another classroom I was in when I asked them how their download speeds are. And the fact that a young child, in first-grade, is talking about download speeds suggests everything you need to know about the nature of the impact of this pandemic and how disproportionate it has been.”

Newsom said he expects school districts across the state to follow all safety recommendations, which he said “are in line with the CDC and aligned with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which I’m more interested in their counsel and advice than, respectfully, those that are seeking to move in the direction of Florida and other states.”