Lucerne Valley Unified trustees formally oppose COVID shots for students, say Newsom plan violates 'fundamental rights'

The Lucerne Valley Unified School District has declared opposition to requiring COVID-19 vaccines for students and staff, standing against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plans for such a mandate if the shots are approved for all ages.

LVUSD’s five-member Board of Trustees voted unanimously Thursday to pass a resolution stating that mandatory COVID vaccines for in-person schooling would be a “blatant and serious infringement of its students’ fundamental rights,” citing legal, ethical and medical principles for why it opposes enforcing such a move.

“LVUSD has operated in-person learning safely since August 20, 2020, without available vaccines for most of that time and without mandates,” the resolution states.

The rural High Desert school district argues that a mandate is not legally enforceable, and that such enforcement would violate the rights to informed consent and education. The resolution also says a mandate would ignore the students and staff who have built natural immunity through past infections, and the low rate of severe COVID outcomes in people under 65 with no preexisting conditions.

This marks the latest point of conflict between LVUSD and California’s government on policies in relation to the novel coronavirus. Lucerne Valley schools were among the first to reopen in California last year after closures that followed the virus’ emergence, and LVUSD argues that the state government spurned it of $500,000 the district should have received for enrollment increases that occurred as a result.

Newsom announced on Oct. 1 that COVID vaccination would be mandatory for all schoolchildren if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration greenlights the jabs for their age bracket.

The FDA is still conducting studies and has not approved any coronavirus vaccines for children under 12 years of age, though Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE asked the regulator last week to grant their mRNA shot an emergency-use authorization.

LVUSD Superintendent Peter Livingston said that at no point before or after Newsom’s Oct. 1 order has anyone from the state reached out to LVUSD about its plans and announcements on the topic of mandating COVID shots for schoolchildren.

“With the diversity of our state and being the largest in the nation (by population),” he said, “seeking the input of all areas and districts would have been nice.”

A particular issue Livingston noted is the fact that U.S. regulators have not yet decided whether to approve any of the vaccines for children under age 12. He criticized the manner in which Newsom rolled out the mandate as “clearly poor leadership” that implied more authority than actually exists.

“It was clearly a political move by the governor to get national news,” Livingston said. “He wanted to once again say he was the first in the nation at something.”

Beyond religious or medical exemptions, parents can also opt their kids out of getting the shot based on personal beliefs under the mandate announced this month by Newsom. The state Legislature can change that if it passes legislation overriding the personal-beliefs provision.

There are 10 traditional vaccines that California legislatures have made a requirement for schoolchildren regardless of personal preferences, according to Livingston. Newsom and some state lawmakers have floated the idea of adding a COVID vaccination to the list.

LVUSD’s new resolution also states that the “benefits of COVID-19 vaccination do not outweigh the potential harms for all students and staff.”

The mortality rate among people ages 0 to 17 who are infected with the novel coronavirus is miniscule. Research studies and official data show a likelihood that the chance of death in that group is one in multiple millions, with a slightly higher chance of hospitalization. But given the novelty of the virus, scientists do not know what kind of long-term effects may exist from infection.

Potential effects of the COVID vaccines have also become a hotly-argued point of cost-benefit analysis between advocates and opponents of shot mandates.

Health authorities worldwide maintain databases to collect reports of these “adverse events,” such as the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the World Health Organization’s VigiBase.

These databases show a significant total of such reports for COVID vaccine-recipients relative to other widely used shots: More than 2 million adverse reactions worldwide are listed on the WHO's database for recipients of all COVID-19 vaccines compared to about 267,000 for all influenza vaccines. Yet, because these databases are made up partially of self-reported reactions, some argue they are not a credible source.

Charlie McGee covers the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities for the Daily Press. He is also a Report for America corps member with the GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.