Can Idaho schools require COVID-19 vaccines? Here’s what students, teachers should know

As students and teachers prepare to head back to the classroom in the fall, questions remain about what exactly that will look like and how COVID-19 vaccines will play into those plans.

K-12 public schools across Idaho won’t be requiring the vaccine for students yet, according to current immunization requirements from the state. School districts across the state also don’t appear to have plans to implement vaccine mandates for teachers and staff, said Quinn Perry, policy and government affairs director for the Idaho School Boards Association.

Many of Idaho’s colleges and universities, too, said early on they didn’t plan to mandate the vaccine. Gov. Brad Little issued an executive order in April banning “vaccine passports” — having proof one is vaccinated, essentially — which included higher education institutions.

But now, the question over vaccine mandates has once again entered the spotlight, after major health care systems in the state announced they would be requiring the shots for employees and contractors. Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin pushed for reconvening the legislative session to stop the mandates.

School districts and officials in the Treasure Valley have provided information about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines and have partnered with health care providers to offer clinics, but they have stopped short of any kind of requirements.

And in Idaho, pushback against any vaccine requirements — including in schools — is nothing new.

Rules around mandating vaccines

The rules around vaccine requirements can be traced to a Supreme Court case from 1905, said Richard Seamon, professor of law at the University of Idaho College of Law. In that case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court ruled that it was within the state’s right to allow for the mandate of the smallpox vaccine for public safety.

“Ever since then, it’s been understood and largely accepted that public schools can require kids generally to get vaccines in order to enroll in school,” Seamon told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview.

K-12 schools in Idaho mandate a number of vaccines for students entering the school system — such as measles, mumps and rubella, Hepatitis B and polio — but there are wide opportunities for exemptions.

Vaccine mandates for students in K-12 public schools have to be done at a state level and go through the Legislature. In Idaho, the state requires that when kids are being enrolled in school, parents must “present your child’s immunization record or a valid immunization exemption to the school at the time of registration.”

Children can be exempt from getting the vaccine in Idaho for medical, religious or “other reasons,” according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Parents can provide a written statement if they want their child to be exempt from the requirements. Medical exemptions have to be done by a licensed physician.

The exemptions in Idaho are broad, Perry said. But year after year, there has been opposition to vaccine requirements anyway.

“We’ve had a fight every year it feels like,” she said in a phone interview. “Time and again, there’s usually people that stand up to object to all immunization requirements for school children.”

Tina Tan, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said overall, the rate of vaccinations across the country has been enough to be effective.

“Because we’ve done a really good job in this country of keeping our vaccine rates fairly high, we’ve been able to control the spread and transmission of these diseases that are known to be more transmissible in a school-type setting,” she told the Statesman.

“There has been pushback on vaccinations since the smallpox vaccine was developed. Now with the COVID vaccine, it has become much more politicized. and that is a problem.”

The situation is also somewhat different with the coronavirus vaccines, because they are approved only under an emergency use authorization, and don’t have full approval yet from the Food and Drug Administration. None of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines is available yet for children younger than 12, so students in elementary school don’t even have the option to get vaccinated.

Kristin Rodine, a public information officer for the State Department of Education, said there “has been no legislation to make the COVID-19 vaccine one of the required vaccinations for school-age children in Idaho.”

“No effort to add a new vaccination requirement has been announced, and any such change would need to be approved by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare and the Idaho Legislature to amend Idaho Code,” Rodine said in an email.

In Idaho, the percentage of children ages 12-15 who have received at least one dose of the vaccine is just 18%, according to data from Health and Welfare. The rate for children 16-17 who have received at least one dose is 28%.

What school districts, colleges and universities have said

Some school districts across Idaho, including Boise and the state’s biggest district, West Ada, have said they don’t have plans to put into effect any vaccine mandates.

For teachers and staff members, a district’s board of trustees could mandate vaccines, Perry said, citing guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. There would need to be accommodations for certain exemptions, such as medical, she said.

Perry said she doesn’t know of any district or charter school across the state that is requiring their staff to get the vaccine. “And I haven’t heard of anywhere that’s planning to,” she said.

School districts instead have tried to make the vaccine accessible to staff without requiring it, she said.

In the Boise School District, area director Brian Walker said during a board meeting earlier this week that a vast majority of the district’s staff is vaccinated, but the district isn’t requiring staff to produce information to prove it. However, teachers can submit that to be added to their files, he said.

Char Jackson, chief communication officer for the West Ada School District, said the district is not pursuing a vaccine mandate for staff.

In April, Little signed an executive order so state departments, agencies, boards, commissions or other executive branch entities couldn’t require proof of vaccination. That order applies to higher education, but not to K-12 public education.

“Boise State University is not requiring a COVID-19 vaccine for students or faculty,” Mike Sharp, director of media relations, said in an email. “That decision was made at a university level before any state action related to the issue.”

The same is true of the University of Idaho and Idaho State University, though they have encouraged the vaccine.

“U of I has no plans at this time to mandate for students or staff,” said Brian Walker, external communications coordinator, in an email.

Emily Frandsen, public information specialist for Idaho State, said in an email that the school “is not considering mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for students or employees.”

Hundreds of colleges and universities outside of Idaho have chosen to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, including several in the neighboring states of Washington and Oregon. The American College Health Association earlier this year recommended vaccine requirements for students returning to campus in the fall.

How could vaccines impact the return to schools?

Mandating vaccines in schools and elsewhere could have a negative impact, Tan said.

“The thing you need to realize about vaccine mandates is that it’s a very slippery slope and it can actually backfire on you,” she said. “If you say schools need to mandate the vaccine and teachers don’t want to receive the vaccine, they can just quit.”

In that scenario, districts could find themselves without enough staff.

Running education campaigns and providing people with accurate information are both important for encouraging people to get vaccinated on their own, she said.

“We know that vaccine mandates for certain diseases work very well, and that’s why in all different states kids have to have vaccines,” Tan said. “I think people need to read the true facts. There is so much misinformation that is circulating on social media and on the internet that people really need to go to reliable sources and read why this is so important.”

Many school districts in the Treasure Valley are expecting to return to the classroom in the fall with models that look much more normal than they did this past year. Both the Boise and West Ada school boards have approved plans that make masks optional. In the Boise School District, masks are simply encouraged among teachers and students who are not fully vaccinated.

Districts have said they will be taking other precautions, including hand washing, sanitizing and distancing to the largest extent possible. They also plan to monitor COVID-19 cases in the region, and could change course. Their plans came in response to input from stakeholders, including parents and teachers.

“As we learned throughout this pandemic, situations can be fluid and we will continue to work in partnership with our health professionals and families to provide safe learning environments for all of our students,” West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub said last month.

Tan said there could be issues when students return to school, creating a scenario in which virus variants spread easily among unvaccinated children.

“We’re already seeing surges of COVID due to the Delta variant in areas where there are large numbers of individuals that are unvaccinated,” she said. “COVID is not gone. The pandemic has not ended.”

Becca Savransky covers education for the Idaho Statesman in partnership with Report for America. The position is partly funded through community support. Click here to donate.

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