Vaccine Mandate affecting students learning choices
For a year, COVID-19 has brought an impact to businesses and low-income communities including the education system since a lot of students had to move to virtual learning. By keeping students safe from the pandemic, they were able to continue their education while at home but there are some that find virtual learning less engaging and challenging after a few months. With the COVID cases going down, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced that all schools will hold in-person classes again if students show proof of vaccination. As the LAUSD inputs the vaccine mandate policy it causes outrage to a lot of students and parents in North Hollywood.
With the schools pressuring students to get the vaccines, it leads to difficult situations where they must meet the expected deadlines, or the students will be restricted to enter campus and continue online learning. In my community, North Hollywood has a total of 4,005 COVID cases according to Crosstown and there are reason students are becoming overwhelmed dealing with both the pandemic and vaccine mandate.
This is an important topic to discusses because the mandate is not just preventing people to get infected but also cause social issue where people who are unvaccinated get discriminated. Most importantly is understanding that some students prefer to attend in-person session than virtually. At the same time, the mandate is preventing the fate of their education. The idea for my report is to engage with North Hollywood residents about the situation occurring in the education system. I also want to make sure that every detail from both students and parents are represented while reporting especially the Latino community which is a specific group I want to focus on.
According to the Census Reporter, it shows that North Hollywood has a 53% rate of Latino’s living in the area which includes students. I want their stories to be told about the struggles they face while learning virtually, along with the decisions they have make to continue in-person sessions.
The coverages in my community was easy to find which in a report from CBS Los Angeles, it discusses how the mandate is taking away student’s places at the schools if they refuse to get vaccinated that could foreclose educational opportunities and continue online learning. As for Ciero Independiente, it also mentioned a similar topic to how COVID-19 impacted a lot of high school seniors but were able to make the memories last. I want my story to be engaging to other communities who have kids that are facing the same situation in their school. I know not many students prefer online learning and if the option disappears, it will lead to force vaccination.
For my story format I will use mostly use photo because it shows the idea of the topic which will make the explanation clear. As for the questions, the listening post provided a few helpful tips to set up my question and since I have experience in interviewing people the questions I will ask is in relation to the topic but also a personal story based on their struggle in school.
Questions:
· What grade are you in?
· How are students feeling about returning to campus despite the vaccine mandate?
· How are unvaccinated students coping with being restricted to a virtual learning experience?
· What are some option that the school are giving to students who are not vaccinated?
Article Links: CBS LA: https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/10/09/parent-of-science-school-student-challenges-lausd-vaccine-mandate-in-court/
Ciero Independiente: https://www.ciceroindependiente.com/english/pandemic-morton-east-seniors-make-best-of-graduation
