Every state has a list of required vaccinations for schoolchildren. These mandatory vaccinations ensure that schools are a healthy and safe place to learn.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than half a million Americans and 3 million worldwide, is the most serious contagious health threat facing the world. The FDA has approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for teens 16 and older. It’s also on the cusp of being available to children 12 and older, with emergency approval expected next month.

Should this vaccine be added to the list of required shots when students return in the fall?

At first blush it makes sense, considering that the pandemic has led to millions of students being out of classrooms for more than a year. Developing a vaccine that is effective at preventing serious illness was the crucial first step to ending the pandemic. Just as important, however, is getting it in the arms of as many people as possible. This is what prevents the virus from continuing to mutate and infect people. Already, the newest mutated strains are 50% more contagious than the original COVID-19 strain, and they are more likely to cause serious illness.

But this fall will be too soon for public schools to mandate the COVID shot.

The vaccine has been approved with emergency use authorization, which speeds up vaccine manufacturing and administrative processes during a public health emergency. It does not mean shortcuts are taken in the development, research, trials or studies of possible side effects. But given this EUA status, the legality of states making it mandatory is unclear.

Dr. Kelly Moore, deputy director of the Immunization Action Coalition, which works to increase immunization rates to prevent diseases, said addressing parents’ questions and concerns about the vaccine should be the top priority right now.

“You cannot take a shortcut to getting high vaccine coverage by making a requirement without going through the education process,” she said. “Families need to be able to ask questions and learn about it. A vaccine requirement tends to be much more acceptable when the vaccine is already in widespread use.”

There will always be holdouts and loud critics of vaccines, and social media can be used to spread misinformation more easily than ever. However, the vast majority of people are glad to prevent illnesses like polio, measles, mumps and rubella through inoculations. Around 90% of school children receive these well-known, established vaccines.

Newer ones require a thorough education period. There are examples of past missteps in this process -- the HPV vaccine, for one. As soon it was approved and recommended for teens, some jurisdictions tried to require it.

“There was this huge backlash against it,” Moore said. Parents were fearful of possible side effects and uncomfortable with the idea of inoculating children against a virus transmitted by intimate contact.

The HPV vaccine is “one of the most effective we have,” Moore said. “It will prevent thousands of deaths from cancer, and yet it still has an undeserved bad reputation because of that history.”

In the near future, the COVID vaccine will gain full FDA approval. Perhaps as early as next year, states will consider making it mandatory in certain settings. But until then, debunking the myths around the vaccine, educating people about the benefits of getting it and the risks of skipping it should be a top public health priority.

It’s only when communities are able to reach herd immunity thresholds that we can protect those whose health conditions prevent them from getting immunized.

Currently, private institutions can mandate the vaccine. More than 90 colleges and universities have announced that students must be vaccinated before returning to campus in the fall.

Hopefully, this will be another positive step in helping people realize these vaccines give us an opportunity to regain what this pandemic has stolen from us.

The more who get on board willingly, the better for everyone.

A teenage girl and her cellphone helped bring a murderer to justice and forced a reckoning for the entire justice system in America.

Last May, Darnella Frazier was walking with her 9-year-old cousin to a corner store for snacks when she happened upon a gruesome scene -- a police officer with his knee pressed against a man's neck who was struggling to breathe. Darnella, just 17 at the time, became more than just a bystander the moment she started recording on her phone.

Her witness led to one of the rarest outcomes in the history of this country: the conviction of a white cop for murdering a Black man.

"The world needed to see what I was seeing," she later said to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Her eyes opened the eyes of the world.

She showed us the clearest and most damning evidence refuting the statement the police department released soon after George Floyd was killed. Their press release made no mention of then-police officer Derek Chauvin even touching Floyd. The headline on the police version of events said, "Man dies after medical incident during police interaction."

It was her video, uploaded to Facebook and watched by millions around the world, that showed Chauvin pushing his knee onto Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. It was her video that provoked a reaction so intense and raw that it ignited the largest protests against police brutality and racism that our country has seen.

It was an excruciating video, and many could not bring themselves to watch footage of yet another Black man dying. But Darnella made us confront the brutality we know exists by revealing its haunting details: Chauvin's casual stance, his hand in his pocket; the ignored pleas for mercy; Floyd, a grown man, calling for his mother. Even if we diverted our eyes from Chauvin, we saw the cops standing by, watching a fellow officer continue to suffocate a motionless man on the ground. Without her video, the police's narrative about Floyd dying at the hospital from a "medical incident" would remain the official version of events. A murderous cop would still be on the force.

Darnella persevered in that moment despite risks to her own safety.

It's easy to praise a hero, especially in retrospect. It's harder to face the questions her actions compel us to ask ourselves: Would I have had the courage of Darnella Frazier? Am I raising a child who would be as composed as she was while witnessing an agent of the state torture and murder someone?

Many parents would reasonably fear for their child's own safety and well-being if they encountered a similar situation. But Darnella and her cousin are reminders of the remarkable resilience that children are capable of. They both testified during a trial watched by millions.

Initially, Darnella faced online backlash from those who attacked her for posting the video. Commenters accused her of seeking attention and criticized her for not doing more to intervene in the moment. The notion that a Black teenage girl should have directly confronted four armed cops while one committed a felony is beyond ludicrous.

But she was still a child in the aftermath, trying to process what had happened.

She told the jury during Chauvin's trial that she cried repeatedly at night, apologizing to Floyd for not doing more to save his life. In him, she saw her own Black father, brothers and friends. She has needed therapy to deal with her own trauma.

She may now realize what her courage made possible.

In the moment when she witnessed the unjust and merciless power of the state, Darnella reclaimed her own power. Hitting record became an act of resistance. Sharing what she saw spoke truth to power. Those who raised their voices against it became a chorus for change.

Her video changed our country.

Her act of recording it should change our hearts.

It was a crummy year to be a high school senior.

Not only did this year’s graduating class finish their final year in a pandemic that canceled most of their milestone moments, but they also applied to colleges in the hardest admissions cycle ever for highly selective colleges.

This week, Ivy League institutions released their admissions decisions. And sure enough, the headlines about plunging, ridiculously low admit rates -- less than 4% at Columbia and Harvard -- dominated the news.

A tiny sliver of the country’s students are educated at these places. More broadly, colleges and universities that accept fewer than 50% of applicants also saw an increase in applications. Part of this dramatic rise can be attributed to this year’s test-optional policies that permitted students to apply without submitting ACT or SAT scores. Also, far more students were stuck at home during lockdowns without extracurricular activities competing for time spent filling out college applications.

But these aren’t the main reasons why it was the hardest year ever to get in, according to Brian Taylor, managing partner at Ivy Coach, a New York-based private college consulting firm. Around 20% of last year’s admitted students at these schools took a gap year, meaning there were fewer seats available in a year with unprecedented application numbers, he said.

Every year, there are hordes of exceptionally qualified, dedicated students denied admission to the most elite colleges. This year, many of these students may have also been shut out of or wait-listed at the next tier of schools -- those in the top 20 of the infamous ranking guides.

Lots of high-achieving, talented students got hit with the bad luck of bad timing.

Meanwhile, less selective schools (defined as those that accept more than 50% of applicants) and community colleges with open enrollment have seen significant declines in applicants. Again, the reasons are multifold. Time magazine cited sobering statistics: Anywhere from 7.7 million to 10 million adults canceled plans to take postsecondary classes last fall because of financial constraints related to the pandemic. Those numbers are based on estimates from U.S. Census Bureau surveys conducted biweekly since August.

Last year, the number of high school graduates who immediately went on to college in the fall declined 11.4% in high-poverty schools compared with the previous year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The decline was only 2.9% at low-poverty high schools.

In addition to potential students and their families losing jobs and savings, they also lost critical social support due to lockdowns. Many struggled with virtual learning and would have benefitted from in-person guidance in navigating the college application and financial aid processes.

There is, however, a potential silver lining to this bleak year of admissions for students.

Applications from first-generation students to large, more selective private colleges increased by 20%, according to data released by the Common Application (the college application used by more than 900 schools). A similar increase can be seen in applications from low-income students and students of color to highly selective colleges.

So, will this be the year that selective institutions admit a significantly greater number of students from these historically marginalized groups? Will they share data on acceptance rates for those who submitted optional standardized test scores versus those who did not? Have colleges and universities taken advantage of these unprecedented circumstances to come closer to their missions of closing the gaps in higher education, or will they end up replicating the privileges and inequities in the status quo?

It will be revealing to see if these institutions embrace transparency in revealing the progress we would expect to see from these metrics.

In a year that changed the life trajectories of millions of students, let’s hope these gatekeepers can get things moving in the right direction.