Los Angeles’ Barack Obama Global Prep Academy bribed a 13-year-old student into receiving two doses of the Pfizer COVID shot without receiving parental consent, the teen’s mother states.
The school wanted the vaccination to remain secret. “The lady that gave him the shot and signed the paper told my son, ‘Please don’t say anything. I don’t want to get in trouble,’” Maribel Duarte told NBC Los Angeles on Monday.
Duarte said that her son agreed to receive a vaccine after he was offered pizza at school.
While being vaccinated herself, Duarte did not want her son to receive a jab since “he has problems with asthma and allergy problems,” which could increase his risk of possible adverse reactions to the vaccination.
The mother added, “It hurt to know he got a shot without my permission, without knowing and without signing any papers for him to get the shot.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) refused to comment on that specific case, citing the confidentiality of “students’ matters,” but provided that “its ‘safe schools to safe steps incentive program’ is meant to ensure several steps are in place for vaccinated students to receive prizes.”
LAUSD’s Safe Schools to Safe Steps Incentive Program offers rewards to “families who upload proof of their vaccine, have an approved medical exemption, or have conditional admissions.” Per its website, the winners will receive such prizes as tickets to Disneyland, tickets to music concerts and basketball games, Amazon and grocery gift cards, and a cash prize of $25,000.
Duarte and her attorney, Jennifer Kenned, said they are attempting to reverse the vaccine mandate implemented by the school district. Kenned noted, “The LAUSD does not have the power to add a vaccine to the California school schedule. You couldn’t do it if you were a Podunk school district and you can’t do it if you’re LAUSD, the second-largest district in the nation. You don’t have that legal authority.”
The district issued a resolution that required all students age 12 and older to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by January 10, 2022, unless they have a medical or other legal exemption, according noted by The New American.
Students who don’t provide proof of vaccination won’t be permitted to participate in in-person learning following the end of winter break on January 11 and will have to study remotely under the LAUSD’s independent-study program. The rule affects 225,000 students in grades six through 12, as well as 17,000 students in independent charter schools that use LAUSD campuses.
First, parents are the ones who should decide whether or not their children should be inoculated.
While the laws regarding parental consent for minors to receive COVID vaccines differ depending on both the state and vaccine in question, most states (41) require parental consent for vaccination of minors below the age of 18, although one of these states (Nebraska) requires consent below age 19. There are some exceptions to these requirements:
- Many allow for certain minors, such as those who are emancipated, homeless, or living apart from their parent or guardian, or married, to self-consent.
- Cities in two states (San Francisco in CA and Philadelphia in PA) have moved to allow minors, ages 12 and older, to self-consent for COVID-19 vaccination.
- In one state (AZ), if a parent refuses to consent for COVID-19 vaccination, but if a child or a doctor requests it, a court order can be obtained to allow for vaccination.
In Rhode Island, South Carolina, Alabama, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., a minor’s ability to self-consent is based on a specific age.
Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington apply the “mature minor doctrine,” meaning that there is no specific age cut-off; it is up to the providers’ discretion to decide if a minor possesses the maturity to consent to receive a COVID shot.
The COVID vaccine mandate for children and adolescents issued by the LAUSD is arguably legally shaky, to say the least. As argued in the petition against the district filed by the California chapter of Children’s Health Defense — a group founded by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — LAUSD acted beyond its authority by requiring students to receive a vaccine that hasn’t been mandated by the state as a condition for attending school in person.
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced in October that all K-12 students in the Golden State must get their COVID shots once the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gives full approval of the vaccine for their age groups.
Then there is, of course, the safety issue of the COVID vaccines for children. In November, during the Florida COVID Summit, leading physicians from all over the world urged healthcare policymakers to exclude healthy children from the vaccine mandates, arguing that for that population, the risks associated with vaccines far outweigh the benefits.
During deliberations on the Pfizer shot’s safety for children held by the FDA’s Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, Dr. Eric Rubin said, verbatim, “We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it. That’s the way it goes.”
