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Amid worsening COVID-19 outbreaks and a rash of new vaccine requirements, a Los Angeles County school district is believed to be the first in the state to announce it will require eligible students to prove they’ve had the shots. They may soon have company.“ Other districts are thinking about it,” said Quoc Tran, superintendent of the Culver City Unified School District, which announced the policy this week ahead of Thursday’s first day of school. It is the latest in a series of new federal, state and local orders aimed at controlling a wave of COVID-19 infections throughout the state and across the country, driven by the highly contagious delta variant of the virus. (Woolfolk, 8/19)

As the fall season is ramping up for school districts across the country, some teachers will be required to be vaccinated amid the rise of the delta coronavirus variant, including those in Connecticut and Oregon. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, announced a new executive order on Thursday amending current COVID-19 emergency declarations to require all state employees, staff of all childcare facilities, and faculty and teachers at PreK-12 schools to receive at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by September 27, 2021. (Richard, 8/19)

Rice University on Thursday announced that it will be switching to online classes for at least the first two weeks of school amid a higher number of COVID-19 cases. Rice’s provost, Reginald DesRoches, said in a letter to students that classes would start on Aug. 25 and remain virtual through at least Sept. 3. (Vakil, 8/19)

Spelman College’s faculty council, the organizing arm for professors at the influential historically Black women’s college, told students on Thursday morning that they would no longer teach in-person classes, citing a lack of “clear and enforceable” safety guidelines from the school administration, per an email obtained by The 19th. Classes at the college began Wednesday. Spelman, located in Atlanta, is one of the first colleges or universities to feel this kind of pressure from faculty this fall after thousands of instructors at American colleges took a similar stand last summer. (Rummler, 8/19)