Some Sonoma County families plan to join statewide protest against student vaccine mandate

A statewide protest against California’s planned vaccine mandate for K-12 students will also unfold in Sonoma County, even as local education officials ask parents to refrain from participating.

Some parents opposing the mandate are planning to keep their kids home from school on Monday, or in some areas, facilitate walkouts from school campuses during the day, according to media reports from communities across California. Locally, a protest at the Sonoma County Office of Education is also planned, said Jennifer McGrath, a west county mother of five who is planning to keep her kids home.

McGrath is one of the moderators of a Facebook group where locals are organizing to advocate against the mandate, called Sonoma County Parents Stand Up For Our Kids. The group, McGrath said, is growing by 10 to 20 members a day and reached over 1,100 members in 11 days, though it was unclear how many planned to participate in the local protests.

“Theyr’e not anti-vaxxers,” she said. “A lot are vaccinated, but don’t want their kids vaxxed. They’re not all Trump supporters; they’re not all conspiracy theorists.”

Instead, McGrath said, many parents planning to protest simply believe COVID-19 does not present a risk to children that warrants mandating a vaccine to attend school in person. Personally, she wants more research to be done on long-term effects of receiving the vaccine, especially on children’s development.

“(The principle) is informed consent,” she said. “And we don’t have enough information.”

Children 12 and older since May have been able to get the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine under emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. More than 71% of 12- to 17-year-olds in Sonoma County have been vaccinated as of October.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the COVID vaccines are safe and effective.

“Vaccine monitoring has historically shown that side effects generally happen within six weeks of receiving a vaccine dose,” the CDC webpage on COVID vaccine safety reads. “For this reason, the FDA required each of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines to be studied for at least two months (eight weeks) after the final dose. Millions of people have received COVID-19 vaccines, and no long-term side effects have been detected.”

Emergency authorization for COVID vaccines for children age 5 through 11 is expected to come in November. County officials are preparing robust campaigns and clinics to get children in that age group vaccinated when the time comes.

California students will be required to present their schools with proof of vaccination only after the FDA gives full approval to the vaccine for the age group they fall in, and then only at the start of whatever academic term follows the full approval. It’s likely, especially for the younger age group, that the mandate won’t kick in until the start of the 2022-2023 school year.

Superintendents in several Sonoma County school districts, as well as Sonoma County Superintendent Steve Herrington, sent messages to families asking them to consider refraining from protesting Monday.

“We understand that families and students may have strong emotions and questions about COVID-19 safety measures," Herrington’s Friday public announcement said. ”However, keeping children home from school to protest a COVID-19 vaccine requirement announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom ... would only result in more lost learning time for our students.

“Our school funding will not be impacted by these absences,” the message continued. “But our children will be.”

School officials sought to remind parents that local districts and the county do not have the authority to contradict the governor’s requirement; they can only set the timeline for enforcement once the FDA gives full approval to vaccines for specific age groups. Religious and medical exemptions, for now, are still an option for families.

“The importance of ensuring routines and consistency with school time can't be overstated,” Herrington said.

The Monday protest is not where the opposition ends, though, according to McGrath. She and other parents are organizing an association to advocate in other ways beyond protests, she said, though the specifics of those plans were not yet clear.

“What we’re telling them is, there’s a lot of us, it’s not OK with us and it’s going to be met with resistance,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ka_tornay.