The Board of Trustees of the Calaveras Unified School District in California voted unanimously this week against complying with the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students and staff in a monumental move applauded by parents and staff inside and outside the district.
“The board is aware of the potential impacts on the district in terms of possible liability exposure, funding loss, other formal actions that can be taken against the district in response — and they understand the Superintendent’s recommendation for mandate compliance based upon these potential consequences — but they feel strong in their individual positions on this topic,” the board stated in a letter to families and staff ahead of the meeting.
According to the Daily Wire, the school district is comprised of 10 schools and serves more than 2,800 students. The vote applies to both students and staff.
The group announced its decision to parents on Facebook on Wednesday, adding that the board would also be voting on mask mandates and testing protocols at the next meeting on November 23.
The announcement received significant praise from Facebook users, with nearly 300 likes and more than 100 positive responses.
“Thank you for standing up to unconstitutional mandates,” wrote one user. “We must protect our rights or we’re done for.”
One Facebook user said she was a teacher who is interested in working in the district after the vote.
“I’m a teacher who has been out of work for a year and a half due to idiotic, unscientific, unconstitutional, and illegal mandates,” she wrote. “As far as I’m concerned, ANY teacher who forced a mask on a child committed child abuse, and they should NOT be in the classroom.”
A number of users from outside the area also applauded the move.
“I am a teacher in Tuolumne County and I hope that our school districts have the courage to take the same stance,” remarked one user.
Another said, “I’d love for a copy of this document to show my board.”
The board’s 5-0 vote comes after federal regulators issued an emergency authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5-11, a decision that has been criticized by parents and many in the scientific community.
“The long-term risks of COVID injections for children are unknown while the risks of COVID to children are miniscule to non-existent,” warned former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and world-renown medical doctor Ben Carson in an exclusive interview on Conversations That Matter with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman.
Harvard University professor of medicine Martin Kulldorff told EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders program last month that, while he supports other childhood vaccines, children should not get vaccinated against COVID.
“COVID is not a huge threat to children,” he said. “They can be infected, just like they can get the common cold, but they’re not a big threat. They don’t die from this, except in very rare circumstances. So if you want to talk about protecting children or keeping children safe, I think we can talk about traffic accidents, for example, which they are really at some risk.”
Kulldorff went on to cite evidence from Sweden that underscored COVID’s minimal risk to children, even in the absence of the standard COVID protocols being imposed in the United States.
“Sweden decided to keep daycare and schools open for all children ages 1 to 15. And there are 1.8 million such children who got through the first wave without vaccines, of course, without masks, without any sort of distancing in schools,” Kulldorff noted.
“If a child was sick, they were told to stay home. But that was basically it. And you know how many of those 1.8 million children died from COVID? Zero. Only a few hospitalizations. So this is not a risky disease for children,” he added.
Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveal that just 195 children under the age of four and 442 between five and 18 have died from COVID in the United States as of October 20. Kulldorff said children are more likely to die from the annual flu than from COVID. Children are 15 times less likely to be hospitalized with the disease than individuals who are 85 or older, and 570 times less likely to die, according to the CDC’s own figures, The Epoch Times reported.
And while children are at little risk of getting deathly ill from COVID, the risks of dangerous vaccine side effects for children are a cause for concern, with post-vaccination heart inflammation occurring at higher than anticipated rates, prompting the FDA to add a warning label to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines about myocarditis and pericarditis.
But in spite of the ample evidence that disproves the need for COVID vaccines for children, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced last month that California would become the first state to mandate eligible students to be fully vaccinated for in-person instruction in public and private schools.
The Los Angeles Times reported, “The mandate would take effect for grades 7 through 12 the semester following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of the vaccine for children ages 12 and over, according to the governor’s office. Students in kindergarten through sixth grade would be phased in after the vaccine is formally approved for younger children.”
Meanwhile, Newsom’s heavy-handed approach to COVID has not proven to be effective in reducing COVID cases in the state. In fact, compared to states such as Florida and Texas, where officials have taken a more relaxed approach to the virus, California has significantly higher daily COVID cases.
As of November 9, data from the CDC shows California had a seven-day moving average of 6,297 COVID cases, compared to 3,102 in Texas and 1,470 in Florida.
