Nine months after the vaccine rollout, students grades K-12, attending both public and private schools, will be required to be vaccinated for in person learning starting the term following FDA full approval of the vaccine. 

On Oct. 1, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, visited a middle school in San Francisco to announce the new emergency order. Shortly after the announcement, displeased parents banded together to take a plan of action. Last Monday, parents opposing the vaccine mandate kept their kids home from school and took part in protests across the state. Some parents even decided to take their child to protest with them. Here in Sonoma County, approximately 200 parents and children protested at the Sonoma County Office of Education. 

According to an article written by the Press Democrat, Jessica West, a mother of three and protest attendee said, “We just want to be able to choose for our children what is put into their bodies and be able to research it and not be a part of the research as it’s going on.”

Local parents organized the protest at the Office of Education through a Facebook group called Sonoma County Parents Stand Up For Our Kids. The group reported to have reached over 1,100 members in the 11 days following the mandate announcement. One of the moderators of the Facebook group, Jennifer McGrath, said  in an interview with the Press Democrat, “[The group members] are not anti-vaxxers. A lot are vaccinated, but don’t want their kids vaxxed. They’re not all Trump supporters; they’re not all conspiracy theorists.”

Sonoma County’s superintendent of schools, Steve Harrington, was concerned with the choice parents made on keeping their children home from school. In a message Harrington sent to families in an effort to get parents to reconsider keeping their children home, he said, “We understand that families and students may have strong emotions and questions about COVID-19 safety measures, including vaccine and testing requirements. However, keeping children home from school to protest the COVID-19 vaccine requirement announced by Newsom, as posts on some social media outlets are suggesting, would only result in more lost learning time for our students.”

Early childhood education major, Annaliese Van Sickle, shared her thoughts on the protest and vaccine mandate:  “For an entire year, these same parents have been demanding in-person classes yet when the time comes for the schooling systems to accommodate them and their children’s needs, they pull their children out. Children are already required to have certain vaccines to attend school anyways so why is this now an issue. As a child, I never had chickenpox, mumps, or polio because I was vaccinated, as were my peers.”

Similar to these parents’ apprehensiveness, when the California State University system announced that college students would need to be vaccinated in order to attend in person classes, there were concerns about the legal and ethical ramifications of this decision. Earlier this semester, there was a form circulating through some college campuses and it eventually made its way to Sonoma State. The form consisted of 12 statements to be filled out by authorized personnel at the students’ university and then signed by that person, the student, and a witness. 

The closing statement on this document is as follows: “As the legally authorized officer of the college or university, I have read all of the above information, have provided my students with all of the information that the FDA requires be provided to recipients of the Covid-19 injections, and do hereby agree to assume 100% financial responsibility for covering any and all expenses from adverse events, including death, through insurance coverage or directly. In addition, I affirm that the student shall not be denied access to school should they decline to receive a Covid-19 injection.” The origin of the document and how much weight the form actually carries is unknown. 

Despite the controversy that surrounds this topic, it is likely that the California student vaccine mandate will not be in effect until the start of the 2022-2023 school year as the projected approval date is between Jan. 22 and July 2022.