Patch..com
By Kat Schuster
CALIFORNIA — California became the first state in the nation to require vaccination or weekly COVID-19 testing for all teachers and school employees, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday.
Several large school districts have already issued similar mandates this month, but the new policy is one of the toughest approaches yet to ramp up vaccination rates in California as the highly contagious delta variant continues to drive up cases this summer.
The order takes effect Friday. All schools across the Golden State must be in full compliance by Oct. 15. The state assured that strong testing resources would remain available to K-12 campuses...
Last week, State Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) called for all teachers and school staff in Bay Area school districts to be vaccinated before the first day of school or be tested regularly.
In an interview with Patch on Tuesday after holding a news briefing in East Palo Alto, Becker said: "If we lose another year of in-person learning, that's on us as adults."
"It's really incumbent on us to make every effort to put kids first and to really inspire confidence in the schools to make them as safe as possible — really to build a wall of protection and security around them," Becker told Patch.
"The best way to do that is make sure all the adults that they're going to come in contact with in school are vaccinated," he said. "We know that most of them are. Let's get to 100 percent."