Linda P. Cavazos, Clark County School District Board of Trustees president, speaks after an outburst during a special CCSD meeting at the Clark County Government Center Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. The CCSD Board of Trustees heard public comment on a proposal to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for Clark County School District teachers and other employees.
Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School Board made the right call early Thursday when it voted in support of a vaccine mandate for district employees.
The five board members who voted in favor of the mandate — Linda Cavazos, Irene Cepeda, Evelyn Garcia Morales, Lola Brooks and Lisa Guzman — took a principled and responsible stand for the valley’s schoolchildren, district staff and their families. Really, their decision will benefit everyone in Southern Nevada, given that outbreaks of the highly contagious delta variant in schools can spread anywhere.
In supporting the mandate, the five withstood pressure from a large and loud crowd of opponents who spent hours raging about it. As reported by the Sun’s Hillary Davis, one woman compared this common-sense safety measure to sexual coercion. Others likened it to tyranny, dictatorship and Nazi medical experiments on Jews during the Holocaust.
Good grief. For this crazed rhetoric, blame months of misinformation, propaganda and fear-mongering by extremist-right media and political figures.
Speakers trotted out other familiar right-wing tropes in decrying the mandate as an infringement on their medical autonomy and freedom of choice.
“Even if it was a jelly sandwich, you have no right to make us take it,” one told the board.
Actually, the school board has both a right and a responsibility to set requirements for district employees in the name of protecting safety, health and well-being of students and staff alike. Saying it’s an overstep to make them take their shots is like saying it’s wrong to forbid them from smoking in class.
Beyond that, Nevada requires numerous vaccinations for children to attend public school — hepatitis A and B, MMR, polio, etc. — so mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for staff is in keeping with policies going back more than 70 years to prevent outbreaks of life-threatening diseases in schools.
Another disturbing element of last week’s meeting is that some of the opponents identified themselves as teachers in the district. Before the meeting, there was rumbling that teachers would leave in droves if the mandate were passed, exacerbating a shortage of educators in the district.
It’s worrisome and sad that people who are educating our children could be so misguided.
The reality is that the vaccines are safe and effective, with instances of serious side effects being exceedingly rare. The Pfizer-BioNTech has been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and approvals are anticipated soon for the other vaccines.
With Thursday’s vote, Superintendent Jesus Jara will negotiate with teachers’ unions to craft a mandate. We strongly urge union leaders to work constructively with Jara and get a requirement in place as soon as possible.
If teachers leave the district because of a mandate, that may create some temporary hardship but isn’t the end of the world. If they won’t get vaccinated to protect their students, their colleagues, their families, their friends and everyone around them, it’s best that they find another place to work.
Cheyenne High student Francisco Flores put it well during the meeting when, in a voice of reason that contrasted brilliantly with the blather coming from many of his elders, he outlined the consequences of failing to get vaccinated or take safety precautions.
“If you’re able to get vaccinated without a legitimate excuse and you still haven’t gotten the vaccine this far into the pandemic, you’re the problem,” Flores said. “By not wearing a mask and not being vaccinated, you are robbing the seniors of our last prom, our graduation, sports events, assemblies, clubs, activities and being able to socialize with our peers.”
No rational person wants to see schools shut down again, or see students and their families get sick with COVID-19. A vaccine mandate will go a long way toward ensuring that doesn’t happen.
“If our workforce is ill, if our workforce transmits the disease to other colleagues, if our workforce infects our students ... we fail to help our students achieve academically, which is what we’ve been told today time and time again and what we know is the item that we absolutely have a responsibility to,” said Garcia Morales, who had COVID-19 last year.
Most CCSD employees understand this and have done their part to prevent more outbreaks, with 67% of the district’s 42,000 employees having submitted proof of vaccination.
The vote by Cavazos, Cepeda, Morales, Brooks and Guzman was a signal to those employees that the district supports them and will take all reasonable and responsible measures to protect everyone in the system.
We commend them for good leadership and solid judgment.
