Portland Public Schools discusses possibility of vaccine mandate for students 12 and up
By DREW MARINE
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PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) — To require vaccines for students or not – it’s an ongoing discussion Portland Public Schools is having with parents and students.
Tuesday, school board members asked questions of a panel of local and national health experts surrounding vaccine requirements at schools.
“A failure of the policy would be if we went with the vaccine mandate, and it did not increase the number of people getting vaccinated. In fact, that it ended up keeping people out of school. That wouldn’t be a good policy,” Andrew Scott, a board member, said.
Washington D.C.-based doctor Tress Goodwin said there are several examples of mandates increasing vaccination rates, including for the Chicken Pox vaccine.
“It was approved by the FDA in 1995 but by 2008 only 34% of eligible adolescents were fully vaccinated. School mandates started and now they’re in all 50 states for varicella vaccine between 2000 and 2010. By 2018 – 90% of children have been vaccinated against varicella,” Goodwin said.
PPS documents provided more insight into what this mandate would look like ahead of Tuesday’s meeting. It said they would require students 12 and older in extracurricular activities be vaccinated as a first step, then other students 12 and older would get their shots.
A student who isn’t eligible yet would need to get their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine after their 12th birthday. All of these requirements apply unless a student has a qualified exemption.
After their work session, the school board held a regular meeting where students asked them to require vaccines.
“As long as we wait to do this, more students and community members will become infected with this virus and die. You need to do everything you can to make sure school is safe and so far, that’s not happening to the fullest extent possible but that can change now,” Xander Levine, a PPS student, said.
Some parents, however, disagreed. They said a mandate could negatively impact students’ learning by keeping them out of school.
“Whatever you have to do – you don’t have to do it yet. Portlanders are vaccinating their children voluntarily. You don’t need a mandate. All you’re gonna do is hurt a small minority of kids for a very small bump in vaccination rates,” Kim Mcgair, a PPS parent, said.
Vaccines are not required for students by PPS right now. The school board’s work session Tuesday was just a discussion about a COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
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