Vaccine, Testing Mandate Considered For Beachwood Schools

BEACHWOOD, OH — The Beachwood Schools are considering a vaccine or testing requirement for students 16 and older, who want to participate in extracurricular activities, the district announced.

The proposal would also require all staff to either get vaccinated or take a weekly COVID-19 test, Superintendent Robert Hardis announced. The Beachwood Board of Education will begin considering the changes on Monday and could vote on the proposal on Oct. 16, according to Hardis.

"As our school community looks ahead to the winter months, we seek to avoid the challenges we faced a year ago, when our COVID cases increased, as did the number of quarantines," Hardis said. "Too many students and staff missed too much school."

Employees and students who are already vaccinated can submit a photo or scanned image of their vaccination card to the human resources department. This will be done electronically, and will be treated as a "private medical record," Hardis said.

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Those who choose to get vaccinated will need to submit proof after their first and second doses of the vaccine. For employees or students who don't want to get vaccinated, they will be required to take a virus test weekly and submit negative results to the human resources department.

The Beachwood Schools will provide COVID-19 tests to anyone who is worried about obtaining weekly tests, Hardis added.

Hardis then laid out why he is advocating for the implementation of this plan:

• It will help create the safest, healthiest community we possibly can;
• It will protect those around us who don't have the choice to be vaccinated, our younger students, anyone 11 or younger, and our medically fragile students and staff;
• It will keep our students and staff in school; and
• It will take advantage of the Ohio Department of Health's revised quarantine rules that permit vaccinated students and staff to stay in school even after close contact with someone who is COVID positive, and it allows vaccinated students to return to extracurricular activities, like sports, after just three days, as long as they have been tested and it came back negative.