SAN DIEGO (AP) — A growing number of public schools are using mascots, food trucks and prize giveaways to create a pep-rally atmosphere aimed at encouraging students to get vaccinated against the coronavirus before summer vacation.

Districts from California to Michigan are offering free prom tickets and deploying mobile vaccination teams to schools to inoculate students 12 and up so everyone can return to classrooms in the fall. They are also enlisting students who have gotten shots to press their friends to do the same.

Officials are concerned that once school lets out, it will be even tougher to get enough teens vaccinated in time to guarantee widespread immunity on campuses.

The massive effort has just gotten underway because it was only two weeks ago that federal regulators authorized the Pfizer vaccine for children 12 to 15. Moderna said Tuesday that its COVID-19 vaccine strongly protects kids as young as 12, a step that could put it on track to become the second option for that age group in the U.S. Younger children are not yet eligible.

So far, about 14% of the nation’s 15 million kids ages 12 to 15 have received their first shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among 7.5 million teens ages 16 and 17, that number goes up to 34%, and about 22% have had both shots, according to the latest figures released Monday. The doses are scheduled about three weeks apart.

There are many challenges.

Depending on the state and even county, minors may be required to have a parent present to get the shot. Some parents may not be able to get away from work to do that. Others are unsure about allowing their kids to get a vaccine that only was approved for emergency use.

Protests have popped up outside schools offering the vaccine, discouraging kids who may already be nervous.

Mission Bay High School in San Diego provides an example of the mixed reaction among students.

“I’m not getting it,” said Tatum Merrill, 14, standing with friends outside a mobile vaccine clinic at the school. “It was developed too fast and is kind of sketchy. And I feel like the number of COVID cases is dying down so if everybody else has it, there may not be a need for me to have it.”

Her friend Brandon Cheeks, 15, said he wants the vaccine, but his mother is unsure. In the meantime, another 15-year-old, Laura Pilger, said she feels safer being back in school knowing that she and everyone she knows is vaccinated.

“A woman showed up and was passing out flyers that said ‘your body, your choice’ but the message was not very welcomed,” Pilger said. “Why wouldn’t you want to get the vaccine?”

While hundreds of colleges across the country are requiring students to have proof of vaccination to return to campus, it’s unlikely that K-12 public schools will do the same this fall. It’s unclear whether schools can legally require a vaccine approved under an emergency-use authorization to immediately address the pandemic.

Instead, public schools are trying to entice students to get the shots by making the experience festive while sending flyers home to families to address the vaccine’s safety.

In suburban Detroit, students in the Southfield district who show proof of vaccination will get a free ticket to the senior prom worth $80. The incentive drew protesters who said awarding the vaccinated could lead to harassment of students who haven’t gotten shots.

“We are not separating or segregating students who choose not to receive the vaccine or do receive the vaccine,” Southfield Superintendent Jennifer Green said. “We simply want to provide our students an opportunity to celebrate this milestone in their life.”

The idea won applause from Dr. Howard Taras, a University of California San Diego pediatrician who consults with districts about health safety. He is also the in-house physician for the San Diego Unified School District, the second-largest in California with about 120,000 students. It has been hosting vaccine clinics at schools in communities with low vaccination rates.

The district also took part in a public service announcement with local teens who say, “We’ll be getting the vaccine, now it’s your turn.”

“I think anything that is creating buzz helps,” Taras said, explaining that vaccinating at schools has the added benefit of generating peer pressure.

The virus has spread more rapidly among teens than younger children. “But with a large portion immunized, there is much less chance of it spreading in the classrooms, on buses,” Taras said.

And more students may want to return to classrooms as a result.

While most California public schools reopened in April, fewer than half of students resumed in-person learning, according to an analysis by the nonprofit EdSource.

Many continued with online learning, while some dropped out altogether or went to private schools. Public school enrollment dropped steeply in the nation’s most populous state, falling by more than 160,000 this school year, according to the California Department of Education.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in California with about 600,000 students, plans to have a mobile vaccination team visit every middle and high school campus at least once before the school year ends June 11. The events will feature food trucks and music.

Superintendent Austin Beutner recently appeared with Wilson High School’s “Mighty Mule” mascot to encourage students to roll up their sleeves. He said the district is offering paid leave for district employees to get their children inoculated. Schools where more than 30% of students are vaccinated will each receive $5,000 for projects, and students can decide how the money is used.

The school-based clinics also help administer shots to hard-to-reach populations who feel more comfortable going to their neighborhood school instead of mass vaccination sites.

Maisha Cosby was motivated by a drive-thru clinic at the Washington School for Girls in Washington, D.C. She held her 12-year-old daughter Maya’s hand as she got her shot. Then Cosby got hers.

“All my friends have gotten it and they’re fine, and I’m ready for her to go back to school,” Cosby said.

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Parents of schoolchildren learning from home shouldn’t necessarily count on reclaiming the dining room table any time soon.

After seeing two academic years thrown off course by the pandemic, school leaders around the country are planning for the possibility of more distance learning next fall at the start of yet another school year.

“We have no illusions that COVID will be eradicated by the time the start of the school year comes up,” said William “Chip” Sudderth III, a spokesperson for Durham, North Carolina schools, whose students have been out of school buildings since March.

President Joe Biden has made reopening schools a top priority, but administrators say there is much to consider as new strains of the coronavirus appear and teachers wait their turn for vaccinations.

And while many parents are demanding that schools fully reopen, others say they won’t feel safe sending children back to classrooms until vaccines are available to even young students. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top public health expert, said late last month the Biden administration hopes to begin vaccinating children by late spring or early summer.

By then, districts will be deep into preparations for the next school year.

“As far as 2021-22, at least some part of that school year is likely still going to be pandemic response-related on the assumption that children won’t have access to the vaccine, or at least many won’t,” said Superintendent Brian Woods, of Northside Independent School District, among the largest districts in Texas.

That could mean a more teacher-friendly version of the mix of in-person and remote learning happening now, one that doesn’t require teachers to simultaneously instruct two groups. That could be accomplished either by splitting staffing or rearranging schedules, he said, adding longer term may see an all-remote option for students who have moved on permanently from traditional school.

“There’s going to be some element of the genie not being able to be put back in the bottle,” Woods said. “I think that there now will always be a group of families who want a virtual option. … We know we’re able to, but are we willing to do it?”

Faced with the same reality, California’s West Contra Costa Unified School District is planning a new K-12 Virtual Academy for 2021-22.

“One thing that we have learned during the pandemic is that teaching and learning is now different, and it will not fully be what we used to think was `normal’ ever again,” read the January agenda item before the Board of Education.

The pivot to distance learning last march has proved a lifeline for the education system, but concerns have grown with each passing month about the effects on racial inequities, students’ academic performance, attendance and their overall well being.

In Durham, North Carolina, schools — which has been fully remote since March — announced last month that it would remain that way through the end of the current academic year.

Beyond that, Sudderth said, “the prevalence of the disease will determine what we are able to do.”

The guideline for whether the 32,000-student district could move from remote to hybrid learning in January was a testing positivity rate below 4%. But it’s unclear whether that metric or others that until now have been set by states or districts will hold.

Biden, in an early executive order, directed his education secretary to provide “evidence-based guidance” and advice to schools to safely conduct in-person learning.

“I’m hoping that we don’t have to do hybrid, but I don’t want to be in a position where we haven’t thought it all through,” said Eva Moskowitz, whose 47 Success Academy Charter Schools enroll 20,000 students in New York City.

Success students have been signing in for full days of live remote instruction on school-provided laptops and tablets since the beginning of the school year, an exhausting undertaking that Moskowitz plans to end for the current school year on May 28. The 2021-22 school year will then begin Aug. 2, possibly in a hybrid format.

“I honestly don’t know what the chances are” of continuing remote learning into the next school year, she said.

“Logic would tell me that we shouldn’t have to, but my knowledge of government makes me a little more hesitant,” she said, noting the sometimes conflicting guidance from the city and state and the slow start to the rollout of vaccines.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed that schools in the nation’s largest school district are “going to be back full-strength in September.”

“Everyone wants to be back,” he’s said.

But the head of the powerful teachers’ union, Michael Mulgrew, says it’s too soon to commit. Schools currently are providing some in-person classes to elementary and pre-K students who want them. A plan announced Monday by De Blasio will reopen middle school buildings Feb. 25 but there is no plan yet for high schools.

“It’s a goal of mine, but I can’t say they’re going to open” the United Federation of Teachers president said in an interview. His view of the mayor’s pledge: “This is not about what you want. This is about what you can do safely.”

Chancellor Richard Carranza acknowledged that while the goal is in-person school, distance learning “is going to stay with us” past the pandemic.

“We’re looking at this being a component,” he said during a news conference Monday with de Blasio.

Mulgrew said it will take more than teacher vaccines to open schools fully and safely.

He noted that scientists aren’t yet clear on whether vaccinated people might still be able to spread the virus, even if they aren’t sickened themselves. And he wonders how comfortable families will feel about having unvaccinated children and young teens begin the new year unvaccinated.

“This is where it gets tough. So how do you say you’re opening in September when we need to get these questions answered?” he asked.

A parent coalition in Evanston, Illinois, has asked Superintendent Eric Witherspoon what assurances he could give that Evanston Township High School will provide in-person learning in the 2021-22 academic year.

“We are witnessing a real crisis in our community,” Laurel O’Sullivan, the parent of an Evanston high school junior, said by phone. “We are a coalition that includes medical and mental health experts who are, in their practices in the community, daily seeing kids experiencing a huge surge in mental and emotional health crises. … It’s a social, emotional and academic crisis that we’re seeing.”

The district did not respond to a request for comment.

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