DC students banned from class if not up to date on vaccines

Public schools in Washington, D.C. are banning students from attending class if they aren’t up to date on their vaccines – and parents aren’t happy about it.

“I had to stay home and miss work,” said Takeyiah Riggins, whose daughter is supposed to attend King Elementary.

Riggins said she didn’t receive any warnings about the situation and the school “should have some understanding,” The Washington Post reported.

“I wasted half my day chasing vaccines around town,” added Emily Mechner, whose son is in high school. “I don’t think its right to make examples out of people or to kick them out of school for this.”

District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) officials said they sent families warnings that if their students weren’t fully vaccinated, they’d be excluded from school starting Dec. 4.

Students in D.C. are required by law to be immunized against “preventable childhood diseases” in order to attend school.

DCPS requires over 20 vaccines just for pre-K students and eight additional boosters by 7th grade. So it’s easy to see why some parents might lose track of which vaccines their child has or hasn’t received.

But according to the Post, the law forbidding under-vaccinated students from attending school traditionally hasn’t been enforced. In fact, over 23,000 students started school last year without some of the necessary vaccines.

It’s still unclear why DCPS has chosen to crack down on immunization now, unless it’s because vaccination in the region is generally lagging.

But kicking kids out of school hardly seems like a good solution, parents say.

Solie Williams, whose 13-year-old son attends a DCPS school, explained that clinics are too busy to accommodate the high demand – making it even more difficult for parents to get their kids back in school.

“It’s not my fault the doctors and the nurses are short-staffed,” Williams said. “It’s very inconvenient for a lot of people. I feel bad because [my son] missed his lessons today.”

Meanwhile, New York City Public Schools allow migrant children to enroll and attend – even if they have no vaccines – as long as they get immunized later.

However, other states – such as California and Connecticut – are battling parents who believe their students should be religiously exempt from required vaccinations.

In California, plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit that “California cannot demonstrate that religiously exempt students pose a greater risk than secularly exempt students.”

Complainants in Connecticut are trying to convince the Supreme Court to reinstate the repealed religious exemption.