Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council will force all public school students ages 12 and up to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
LIZ WOLFE | REASON
School starts on Monday for District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), which is requiring—per D.C. Council vote—that all students ages 12 and up be vaccinated against COVID-19. In addition to teens providing proof of vaccination, students of all ages must provide proof of a negative COVID test prior to the first day of school.
"We're not offering remote learning for children, and families will need to comply with what is necessary to come to school," said Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser in a press briefing.
Though students will be allowed limited medical and religious exemptions from vaccine requirements, a significant chunk of the District's teens remain unvaccinated, per current data. That number is significantly higher for black teens: Though 87 percent of D.C.'s white teens, between the ages of 12 and 15, are vaccinated, only 53 percent of D.C.'s black teens are. For the next age group up—comprised of 16- and 17-year-olds—89 percent of white teens are fully vaccinated, whereas only 58 percent of black teens are.
In many other contexts, a city policy having such a racially disparate impact would be cause for concern, particularly for progressives who frequently measure and seek to remedy such impacts. In this context, Bowser and D.C. Council members appear to be less concerned that these restrictive policies might lead to a disproportionate increase in truancy, which could result in parents being harassed and monitored by D.C.'s Child and Family Services Agency (or even, in extreme cases, locked up and forced to pay fines), purportedly out of the state's concern for the good of the children.
Both D.C. Health and Bowser have been explicit about the fact that unexcused absences due to lack of immunization may lead not just to schools "routinely contacting the parent, guardian, or adult student; placing phone calls; sending written notices to the home; referring students to Student Support Teams" but also may include "making referrals to CFSA, the Child Support Services Division, and the Office of the Attorney General, for truancy or educational neglect."
Public schools have long mandated certain vaccines for attendees, like those that protect against measles, polio, and pertussis. D.C. Health has noted that even routine vaccination rates, especially for poor and minority kids, have been lagging—possibly an unintended consequence of COVID lockdowns and people skipping medical checkups.
But it's strange to add COVID vaccines to that list, given that the virus itself is not nearly as serious as measles or polio, and given that these vaccines have only recently been approved for kids.
Though there are practical reasons to want teens to be vaccinated—like preventing classwide outbreaks that might lead to lots of absences—COVID vaccines do a very imperfect job of preventing breakthrough infections. They are valuable primarily for preventing severe illness and death, which already occur infrequently for teens and kids.
Given this, city authorities could reasonably recommend that kids get vaccinated prior to attending public school, as many school districts have. But they have instead chosen to mandate it, which is out of step with the choices of most other school districts in the nation.
This is par for the course for some of the municipalities filled with the most insistent COVID hawks. This week, Bay Area school authorities called the cops on an unmasked 4-year-old and his father in an attempt to get them to leave school premises for masking violations. Similarly, Los Angeles County's public health boss, Barbara Ferrer, toyed last month with the idea of reintroducing mask mandates for residents, before being met with threats of insubordination from the residents of Beverly Hills. (Ferrer soon scrapped her plans.)
Authorities should not, in general, create laws or policies they're not comfortable enforcing; it's therefore quite astonishing that, 30 months into this pandemic, Bowser thinks COVID vaccination is so important to mandate that it would be worth an increase in the number of minority parents investigated or possibly locked up for their kids' truancy.
But that seems like a horribly costly punishment for a debatable "crime" of questionable public health merit, not to mention the host of civil liberties issues raised by mandating proof of COVID vaccination. D.C. officials should think long and hard about whether it's worth it.
D.C. Mayor Dodges Question On Why She Won’t Allow Unvaccinated Black Students In Schools This Fall
Mary Margaret Olohan|THE DAILY WIRE
Washington, D.C., Mayor Democrat Muriel Bowser appeared to avoid addressing a question on why she will not allow unvaccinated black school children back in the classroom this fall by claiming that the statistics she was provided with were inaccurate.
Though many school districts have moved away from such restrictive measures, Washington, D.C., mandates that children 12 and older be “up-to-date on required vaccinations before returning this August.”
A significant portion of D.C.’s black students is not vaccinated, sparking concerns that the mandate disproportionately impacts these children. And on Monday, The Daily Signal’s Douglas Blair questioned the D.C. mayor about “how she could justify forcing 40% of unvaccinated black students to stay home from school.”
“Why is the District continuing with this policy when it seems to disproportionately impact black students?” he asked.
“I don’t think that number is correct,” Bowser responded, though the numbers Blair cited appear to coincide with those put forth by the D.C. Department of Health. “We have substantially fewer number of kids that we have to engage with vaccination. And I explained why it’s important. It’s important for the public health of our students and that we can maintain safe environments.”
WATCH:
I asked D.C. @MayorBowser how she could justify forcing 40% of unvaccinated black students to stay home from school. She said my numbers were wrong. They're her numbers. pic.twitter.com/Gmoidu1YuU
— Douglas Blair (@DouglasKBlair) August 15, 2022
On Monday, the office of the deputy mayor for education told The Daily Wire that approximately 85% of students 12 and older have completed their primary series of COVID vaccination, noting that 95% of students have received at least one shot. The office of the deputy mayor for education believes actual coverage is higher than this due to incomplete data.
D.C. Department of Health spokeswoman Kelsey Felton also confirmed to The Daily Wire on Monday that while approximately 85% of children age 12-17 are vaccinated, 60% of African-American children age 12-17 are known to have already received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
“The actual percentages are likely higher because not all vaccines administered outside of the District are known to DC Health,” she explained. “The race-specific coverage number is particularly likely to be an underestimate because the COVID-19 vaccination records DC Health does receive from outside of the District often do not include both age and race.”
“In the District of Columbia, as in every state in the U.S., children are required to be vaccinated against many diseases to attend school, with exemptions granted for medical or religious reasons,” Felton continued. “For the upcoming 2022-23 school year, vaccination against COVID-19 is included among these requirements for children over the age of 12. DC Health believes that vaccinating children against COVID-19 is an important action to protect them and their families from this virus.”
This chart is available on the Washington D.C. Coronavirus Response website and shows clearly that the 12+ age bracket has a vaccination rate of 60%, meaning 40% of black kids are unvaccinated. pic.twitter.com/eMZSAzscj6
— Douglas Blair (@DouglasKBlair) August 15, 2022
D.C.’s Council, rather than a school board, made the decision to mandate the vaccine despite a Council Office of Racial Equity (CORE) report on the legislation that found “enforcement of the bill will exacerbate racial inequity by disproportionately removing Black students from school.”
“This may result in increased learning loss, additional negative social and educational outcomes and in blocking students from vital school resources,” the report found.
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey released in late July found that many parents don’t plan to get their child vaccinated against COVID, citing “concerns about the newness of the vaccine and not enough testing or research, concerns over side effects, and worries over the overall safety of the vaccines.”
The survey also found that “about one in ten parents say they do not think their child needs the vaccine or say they are not worried about COVID-19.”
Additionally, the survey reported that 44% of black parents with unvaccinated kids between six months and four years old are concerned that getting their child vaccinated would mean that they take time off work (or that the vaccine would give the child side effects that would require the parent to take time off work).
Similarly, 45% of Hispanic parents expressed fears that they would not be able to get their children vaccinated at a trustworthy place.
Some parents (53%) even view the vaccine as a greater danger to their child’s health than COVID itself. The survey found that 67% of those whose children have previously tested positive for COVID believe this.
MORE:
40 Percent of D.C.'s Black Teens Will Soon Be Barred From School Because They Aren't Vaccinated
D.C. Mayor Dodges Question On Why She Won’t Allow Unvaccinated Black Students In Schools This Fall
D.C. schools expand covid vaccine mandate, unlike most other districts
DCPS to Require Back-to-School COVID-19 Tests, Vaccines for Students 12+
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