NC school district rejects student vaccine requirement for athletes, extracurriculars
Orange County Schools middle and high school students who are unvaccinated and want to play sports or take part in certain extracurricular activities will need to be tested twice a week for COVID-19.
The school board decided in a unanimous vote Monday to require the testing for students who want to be a cheerleader or join the band, chorus or theater this year. Unvaccinated coaches and staff involved in those activities also will be required to be tested twice a week. The district plans to offer COVID-19 testing in all schools.
The vote is a departure from the vaccination requirement recommended by district staff and medical experts. The school board declined to take that step before the U.S. Federal Drug Administration gives final approval to a COVID-19 vaccine.
The three COVID-19 vaccines now in use have emergency approval only.
The changes come as the number of positive COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing statewide.
Board member Carrie Doyle said she struggled with the decision. Other board members also wrestled with a vaccine requirement, deciding instead to wait for full FDA approval. Medical experts at the meeting said that approval could happen soon.
“I feel like this is really imminent, and I wouldn’t want to unnecessarily create ill will in our community,” Doyle said. “If our full approval is that imminent, I would really rather not mandate it for students under emergency use authorization. I would have more of a comfort level frankly mandating it for adults.”
Other changes approved Monday included a requirement that district employees get vaccinated within 30 days once a vaccine has full FDA approval. The board approved it in a 5-2 vote, with Bonnie Hauser and Will Atherton voting against the employee mandate.
Atherton noted that some employees may choose to take a religious exemption, negating the value of requiring the vaccine. He argued for the district to offer incentives to employees who get vaccinated instead. Hauser agreed, adding that she would like to know first how many teachers are not vaccinated and why.
The district will continue to monitor COVID-19 data and student absences, and update the board at least every quarter.
All employees will be tested for COVID, regardless of vaccination status, as the in-person school year begins Aug. 23. The only exception will be for employees testing positive for COVID in the last 90 days.
Other unvaccinated employees would continue to be tested once a week.
More restrictions, information meeting
In a separate vote Monday, the board unanimously agreed to:
▪ Allow student athletes 12 and older to participate outdoors without face masks, but wear them while on the sidelines or traveling on school-sponsored transportation. Those students also would have to submit to regular COVID testing.
▪ Allow students under the age of 12 to submit to COVID testing to participate in athletics, cheerleading, club sports, chorus, marching band or theater. Those students, who are not eligible for the COVID vaccine, also would have to wear masks outdoors and while participating in activities.
▪ Allow schools to consider COVID-19 data and transmission rates when deciding whether to allow school field trips in North Carolina but outside of Orange County, including for athletics and other extracurricular activities. Other travel restrictions are possible.
▪ Suspend employee travel for work-related events that are out-of-state. Future decisions also could affect in-state travel.
The district will hold a virtual information session from 6 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, where parents and students can ask questions via a “chat” feature. A link to the information session should be emailed to district families this week, Superintendent Monique Felder said.
Expert recommendations, COVID data
There were 3,378 positive cases reported in North Carolina on Monday, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. Roughly 40% of the cases have been reported in people ages 25 to 49, with 11% reported among children ages 5 to 17.
In Orange County, 290 cases per 100,000 people had been reported in the last 14 days — one of the lowest rates statewide.
The policy changes were drafted after members of the ABC Science Collaborative presented data at the board’s Aug. 9 meeting. The group of medical and research experts has been advising districts for over a year and said recent research shows that 50% to 75% of the virus transmitted between students in high school occurs during indoor and outdoor athletic activities.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NCDHHS officials also have recommended that schools cancel activities or hold them virtually if possible unless students are vaccinated in areas seeing a high virus spread rate, they said.
Danny Benjamin, co-chair of the ABC Science Collaborative, and David Weber, with the UNC School of Medicine and the medical director of UNC Hospitals’ Departments of Hospital Epidemiology, shared additional data about COVID vaccines, safety and potential outcomes with the board Monday.
Vaccines have almost eliminated deadly viruses such as polio and Rubella, but that goal could require vaccinating over 90% of the population against COVID-19, Weber said. Meanwhile, there is a risk of serious infections among children and the potential long-term harm, Benjamin said. In the last few weeks, 115 children have been admitted to UNC Hospitals with COVID infections, he said.
While smaller districts might get away with not requiring vaccination, Benjamin said, “for the school districts that think they’re getting away with not vaccinating, they are helping contribute to the spread of COVID.”
“Ultimately, what I’m trying to do ... is to make it so that these activities aren’t shut down, because if this feels difficult, think about what happens if some of the outcomes that we’re seeing in the other states start to occur,” Benjamin said. “This will seem like an enjoyable experience.”
Parent protests
The threat of required vaccinations prompted a group of over 100 parents, students and district employees to gather Monday afternoon at the Old Orange County Courthouse in downtown Hillsborough to protest the proposed changes.
Most protesters stood peacefully in a line along Churton Street, holding signs and flags, and waving when passing motorists honked in support. One woman stood on the corner, yelling repeatedly for the board to “leave the children alone” at passing cars and people.
Orange High School parent Sarah Snipes cried as she talked about how her son might not be able to play baseball in his senior year after participating for over a decade in the sport. She shared a page of statements from district students, parents and teachers who she said disagreed with a vaccine requirement but were afraid of retaliation for speaking up.
The district needs to leave the decision about vaccinations to each family, Snipes said.
“There’s special, unique situations to every family. My family has unique health situations, and I don’t know how this is going to impact that,” Snipes said. “The board came out with this mandate on Friday, and they’re voting on it tonight, with no interaction from the public at all.”
No other North Carolina district has taken the step of mandating that students and staff get vaccinated, Benjamin said Monday.
That includes the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, which will hold a special meeting Thursday night, spokesman Jeff Nash said. Student-athletes who are not vaccinated are required to be tested weekly, he said.
The state has not mandated that students be vaccinated or wear masks, although the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires masks to be worn on buses.
As of Monday, 62 of North Carolina’s 115 school districts will require students and employees to wear masks in school, including schools in Durham, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, and Wake, Johnston, Orange and Chatham counties.
Another 52 districts — most in smaller or rural counties — decided not to require masks. Pitt County — the lone holdout — was expected to make a decision Monday night.
The state already has reported COVID cluster outbreaks in six schools in Wake County, two schools in Durham and one school in Johnston County, along with two larger outbreaks at charter schools in Brunswick and Union counties.
Legal rights, vaccine challenges
Legally, there are few challenges available to parents and students who oppose a vaccine mandate, attorneys and others said Monday.
Jeff Hirsch, a UNC School of Law professor who specializes in civil rights, discrimination, and labor and employment law, said schools have long required students to get multiple vaccinations, and the courts have upheld that authority.
The only thing different about this situation is that the FDA has not given its final approval to a vaccine, he told The News & Observer in an interview.
“There’s a little bit of haziness there,” Hirsch said. “Among the weaker claims that someone might have is challenging a mandate in order to, for instance, participate in sports or other extracurricular activities. There’s just no right to participate in school sports … so I can’t imagine a court upholding that.”
He noted that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected a hearing last week involving a group of students who had sued the University of Indiana, saying its vaccine mandate violated their constitutional rights. Lower courts had refused to delay the mandate or to block it completely, saying the university has to do what is needed to keep other students safe, the New York Times reported.
In North Carolina, school districts can regulate any aspect of education and public safety that is not regulated by another state law or agency, according to information provided to the Wake County School Board by attorneys with the Tharrington Smith law firm.
School districts can require employees to get vaccinated and provide proof of vaccination, but they can’t require every student to be vaccinated, attorneys Jonathan Blumberg and Jason Weber said. That authority rests with the Commission for Public Health, they said.
School districts, on the other hand, can require students to be vaccinated before participating in sports and extracurriculars, because the students don’t have a right to participate in those activities, the attorneys said.
They noted two bills moving through the state House that could challenge a district’s vaccination authority. House Bill 96 would require parental consent before administering a vaccine that has only been authorized for emergency use, and House Bill 572 would prohibit an executive order or new law that creates a vaccine mandate.
This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 12:47 PM with the headline "NC school district rejects student vaccine requirement for athletes, extracurriculars."
