All California school staff must be vaccinated or face weekly testing

LOS ANGELES • California has become the first US state to issue a vaccine mandate for all educators in public and private schools after Governor Gavin Newsom ordered teachers and school staff members to provide proof of vaccination against Covid-19 or face weekly testing.

"We think it will be well-received to keep our most precious resource healthy and safe," he said, "and that is our children."

The policy, announced on Wednesday, applies to staff members serving students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and went into effect yesterday, with an Oct 15 deadline for full compliance.

Similar mandates are gaining momentum among public and private employers as cases across the United States rise with the spread of the Delta variant.

In Hawaii, officials announced last week that all state and county employees, including public school teachers, must be vaccinated or be tested weekly.

California's policy goes a step further by including private schools. While state officials initially emphasised that they were merely encouraging everyone to get vaccinated, the governor announced late last month that California would require vaccines or testing at least weekly for healthcare workers and state government employees.

Last week, state health officials made the requirement even more stringent, largely removing the testing option for more than two million healthcare workers. But it was not clear then whether California would extend a mandate to hundreds of thousands of educators.

Debate over how to safely reopen schools has been intense and ongoing for months, and decisions over whether to require inoculations have emerged as a recent flashpoint.

At the weekend, Ms Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, expressed her strongest support to date for mandatory vaccination of educators, saying she would urge her union's leadership to reconsider its opposition to vaccine mandates.

"It is not a new thing to have immunisations in schools," Ms Weingarten said on NBC's Meet the Press. "And I think that on a personal matter, as a matter of personal conscience, I think that we need to be working with our employers, not opposing them, on vaccine mandates."

On Wednesday, the California Teachers Association, the state's largest union and an affiliate of the National Education Association, said it supported the vaccination mandate.

For Mr Newsom, getting children back into classrooms is a task with particularly high stakes. Next month, voters will be asked whether they want to recall the governor, and frustration among parents over prolonged school closures has been a significant driver of support for his ouster.

Schools were closed longer in California than in many other states in large part because of a brutal winter surge, but also because of protracted negotiations with teachers' unions.

NYTIMES