The battle to curb the spread of Covid-19 in schools is quickly moving to football fields and basketball courts.
While much of the pandemic-fueled culture war has centered on mask-wearing requirements in classrooms, major U.S. school systems are beginning to require teen athletes, band members and even after-school program participants to get vaccinated.
Eligible kids in Los Angeles public schools need their second dose of Pfizer’s vaccine by Halloween to join in-person extracurricular activities, including sports and after-school programs. Students 12 years old and up in Washington, D.C., public schools must be fully vaccinated beginning Nov. 1 to participate in school athletics. New York City students in “high risk” public league sports and extracurriculars must also get shots, while Chicago Public Schools has announced an athlete vaccine-or-test requirement.
And in Hawaii, one of the first states to require vaccines for students in school-sanctioned sports, the state education department pushed back the start of its fall athletics season entirely so players could be inoculated by the end of September unless they qualify for a medical or religious exemption.
“This is the beginning of a movement,” Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Brabrand said in an interview. The Virginia system in suburban Washington, D.C., is home to nearly 190,000 students and requires winter and spring athletes age 16 and older to get Covid-19 vaccinations by Nov. 8. Younger athletes must take regular virus tests if they’re unvaccinated (those in the fall sports season, however, aren’t subject to the requirement).
“I am convinced that more districts, more states and governors are going to realize that to preserve American public education in person, and to preserve the American athletic experience, we must have vaccinations for our students and our athletes,” he said.
Forty-five percent of 12- to 17-year-olds — approximately 10.7 million children — were fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by Sept. 29, according to an analysis of federal data from the American Academy of Pediatrics. That’s helped fuel a new wave of vaccine requirements for K-12 students, showcasing the latest option to help control the pandemic, especially among children most likely to share crowded locker rooms and stadiums.
The requirements carry out urgent requests to get teen athletes vaccinated from the Biden administration, the American Academy of Pediatrics and national sports medicine associations. They also demonstrate the lengths to which educators, as well as city and state leaders, are willing to go to incentivize older kids to get inoculated — dangling the potential of losing out on a favorite pastime to push vaccine-hesitant families.
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