San Diego Unified will no longer require new employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The district’s board unanimously approved a recommendation to end the requirement that new hires show proof of vaccination at its Tuesday evening meeting.
The item passed without discussion from the board, although one public speaker opposed it.
Jason Davis, a district graduate, said the disease “remains a significant threat to the young, senior, disabled and otherwise immunocompromised populations of our community, and resultingly remains a threat to our community at-large.”
He stressed the importance of vaccination by pointing to the recent resurgence of measles, which claimed its first life in the U.S. in a decade when an unvaccinated child died in Texas this week.
Susan Barndollar, the district’s executive director of nursing, wellness and mental health, told The San Diego Union-Tribune the changes had been planned to end when contact-tracing requirements also ended from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the California Department of Public Health and Cal OSHA.
No other vaccinations are required for adult employees.
Back in September 2021, the district had mandated all staff and students be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 20 of that year. The mandate for students was struck down in court.
The background attached to the item on the agenda cited the ending of regulatory requirements by Cal OSHA and the World Health Organization’s 2023 declaration that COVID-19 was no longer a public health emergency.
Most state workplace regulations pertaining to COVID ended earlier this month, although record-keeping and reporting requirements will remain in effect until Feb. 3, 2026.
Employers are supposed to keep records and track all known COVID-19 cases with the employee’s name, contact information, occupation, work location, last day in the workplace and date of positive test or diagnosis. They should keep the records “for two years beyond the period in which the record is necessary.”
Barndollar said the district doesn’t offer on-site testing but keeps records of positive test results reported by employees. In the event of an outbreak, the county would notify district leaders, “and then we would treat it like any other communicable disease,” she said.
“The hospitalization rate and infection rate of COVID is way down,” she said. “Flu is way up right now.”