WaPo (“Hundreds of people are fired, online learning set to return amid vaccine resistance at nation’s second-largest school district“):
The second-largest school district in the United States is facing mounting woes over its coronavirus vaccine mandate, recently terminating hundreds of employees who refused to comply and vowing to put thousands of unvaccinated students into online classes.
Board members of Los Angeles Unified School District — which has one of the strictest vaccine mandates in the nation — voted Tuesday to terminate 496 employees whofailed to get vaccinated ahead of the deadline.
“We care deeply about all of our employees,” interim superintendent Megan K. Reilly said in a statement following the board’s decision. “Parting ways with individuals who choose not to be vaccinated is an extremely difficult, but necessary decision to ensure the safety of all in our school communities.”
In addition, some 34,000 students are also in violation of the requirements, according to the Los Angeles Times. Per the district’s vaccination policy, students 12 and older must be fully vaccinated — or receive an exemption — by the start of the second semester in January. Those who fail to do so will not be allowed on school campuses and will be referred to an online independent study program.
I’ve been on board with vaccine mandates since I first heard of the idea in March and have written several additional posts since then backing the idea. For them to have any teeth requires hard measures like firing recalcitrant public employees—even in the midst of shortages of people willing to work.
I will not shed a single tear for the teachers and other adults facing consequences for their actions. We’ve required vaccines for students and faculty members attending public school for a very long time.
But in just this one school district—albeit, granted, the largest in the country—we’re also punishing 34,000 students, some of them 12-year-olds, for decisions they didn’t make but rather were imposed on them by their parents. We’re not going to take them from their parents or vaccinate them over the wishes of their parents. This isn’t Soviet Russia or Communist China. So, instead, we’re sentencing them to as many as six more years of online school, which we already know is both exponentially worse academically and socially for the vast majority of students. This is a harsh price to pay, indeed, for the sin of having morons for parents.
