Schools Could Use Shot in the Arm with ADA Revenue

If you’re a parent of a Novato public school student entering seventh through 12th grades, you must know by now that your child needs to have the Tdap booster shot for the coming school year. That’s the booster shot to protect against whooping cough or pertussis.

I don’t know about you, but I must have seen information about this new requirement more than two dozen times over the past five or six months. Considering I hadn’t gotten my two oldest kids their shots by the time school ended in June, I also received an additional missive from NUSD’s Director of Student Services, Raquel Rose. This last notice was titled EXCLUSION NOTICE, and its opening sentence noted “Your child is temporarily excluded from attending school on August 24, 2011 because we have not yet received proof of the ‘Tdap’ (pertussis) booster as of June 10, 2011.”

Up until Monday, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill giving school districts to verify each student’s compliance with the new law, the deadline was the first day of school. For public school kids in Novato, that is Aug. 24. “No Shot, No School” has been front and center on NUSD’s website for quite awhile. (You can see the PDF of the Alert to Parents from the Marin Health & Human Services that is posted on NUSD’s website.)

In 2010, there was a whooping cough “epidemic” in California, with 910 cases reported by the time that school year ended in June, including three deaths of infants down in Southern California. By the end of 2010, a total of 10 infants died from whooping cough. From what I’ve learned, most likely got the disease through exposure from a sibling who was in a day care or school setting in younger grades. But it’s the older kids who are required to get the booster, presumably because the state assumes the younger kids are still protected from the initial vaccine.

I do wonder what the school districts are going to do when all these kids return to school without proof of the shot. In this age of extremely tight budgets, can the state Legislature really expect schools to turn away kids who haven’t had the shot? That would mean the districts would lose their all-important funding based on average daily attendance. School districts which are on a year-round calendar are currently experiencing a nightmare of non-compliance of students, which explains the time extension.

NUSD receives about $31.25 per student per day the student attends school. If enrollment figures are similar this year, there will be about 4,000 students enrolled in an NUSD school in middle school and high school. What happens if 50 or 100 or 500 or more of these students don’t have their booster shot by the new deadline of September 23? Well, starting September 23, that means NUSD is going to lose $1,562.50 or $3,125.00 or $15,625 each and every school day that those kids don’t get the booster. Remember, “your child is temporarily excluded from attending school.”

So get your kid the Tdap booster shot. Or start writing a check for $31.25 to the school district for every day beginning on Sept. 23 that he or she isn’t vaccinated.

Anti-vaccinations? You’ll need to sign the form CDPH 8261 in the presence of a school staff member. That’s the Personal Belief Exemption form for the booster. The state, in its infinite wisdom, assumed quite a few people might just opt to fill out that form as a matter of convenience rather than personal belief, so there’s no accessing it online. You’re going to have to go fill it out at school. I do wonder, though, if they’re less worried about parents taking the easy way out with the form or more worried about school districts, fearful of losing ADA funds, handing it out to parents like, well, lollipops to a kid after she gets a shot.

How about it? Getting your kid the booster? Filing the PBE? Or writing those checks?

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