Coast Community College District adopts vaccination mandate for students, staff
Students starting classes Monday at Coast Community College District campuses must wear masks indoors while on campus and will soon be asked to provide verification they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19 or produce a negative test, officials have announced.
CCCD’s board of trustees in a special meeting Tuesday adopted a vaccination mandate for students, faculty, staff and administration, directing Chancellor John Weispfenning to develop and implement protocols immediately for district employees and by Oct. 1 for students.
The new protocol applies to more than 31,000 students enrolled at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach’s Golden West College and Coastline College in Fountain Valley.
“There are several educational institutions that have moved in this direction all across the state,” Trustee Jim Moreno said Tuesday. “We have to be very clear — we are trying to protect public health.”
Although some classes will meet in person during the fall semester, Weispfenning explained in an Aug. 19 video message the district’s Consultation Council recommended all departments and offices be open just two days each week at no more than 50% capacity on any given day.
Staff on all campuses are asked to work in person only one or two days per week.
“We are doing this out of an abundance of caution with the hope that additional time will give more of our community a chance to get vaccinated and slow the speed of COVID-19 variants,” Weispfenning said in the announcement.
With the new rules are some minor exceptions. For example, students working indoors alone will not have to wear masks. Regarding the vaccination mandate, trustees at Tuesday’s meeting expressed an interest in stipulating students with medical or religious exemptions precluding them from being vaccinated be able to provide regular negative COVID-19 test results.
Erik Fallis, a spokesman for the district, estimated that about 28% of student learning will be conducted through in-person instruction, up from 12% during spring semester of the 2020-21 school year. Most brick-and-mortar offerings, he continued, will be courses that are more difficult to do remotely, such those with labs and career education classes.
“About 24% of students will be attending at least one course in person,” he said.
At Golden West College, some in-person classes remained open during the pandemic, primarily to allow students enrolled in nursing, police academy, automotive and other programs to continue to learn.
“We had a number of programs that never went remote,” Vice President of Instruction Meridith Randall said Friday.
Many restrictions on capacity are due to the fact that planning for the 2021-22 school year began in March, when guidelines issued by the state were stricter. Still, Randall said, student needs and preferences were considered as much as possible.
As such, about 30% of classes will be delivered in person, though students wishing to learn online will also be able to continue their studies without coming to campus, should they wish.
“We wanted to offer students a choice. We continue to hear from students it’s very hard to learn online, we really want to be back on ground,” Randall added. “[But] a lot of students are not comfortable coming back in person, so we do have a ton of online options.
“It’s the same with faculty — some are comfortable coming back in the fall and some aren’t,” she said.
While Coast Community College District adopts policies regarding COVID-19 protocol, it’s up to individual campuses to implement them. Randall said she was confident if trustees put a vaccination mandate in place, the campus would comply.
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