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No Shots, No School For
1,000s Of Texas Kids

By Jim Forsyth
8-5-4
 
Tens of thousands of San Antonio area school students risk being turned away on the first day of school later this month under a new Texas Department of Health rule requiring that no student be admitted to class unless he or she has all of the required inoculations.
 
Previously, students were given a 30 day 'grace period' to get the required shots if they didn't have them when classes began.
 
"The laws are very plain," Pascual Gonzales of the Northside ISD told 1200 WOAI news. "If you don't have your immunization, you can't come to school."
 
Gonzales says in the past, students were allowed into class under the thirty day grace period, and then 'forgot' to get their immunizations, placing all other students and school staffers at risk.
 
"Once and for all, we have to make it clear that immunizations are very very important," Gonzales said.
 
Gonzales estimated that 2,000 Northside students may be without inoculations when school begins in two weeks. In the Austin ISD, that number is far larger.
 
"We fear that on the first day, we may have 8,000 to 10,000 students who aren't current," AISD spokesman Andy Welch told the Austin American Statesman.
 
In addition to putting the students behind going into a new school year, the new rule could cripple some school district's budgets. Each school district gets roughly $27 per day in state aid for every student who is in class that day. If thousands of students all miss several days, or weeks, of class, the impact to districts' budgets could be enormous.
 
But Gonzales says the new law makes sense.
 
"It just not fair to the public health of all of the other students involved for one student not to be immunized against all of the diseases that can be prevented," he said.
 
The Metropolitan Health District and numerous other health agencies, Centro Del Barrio, and other groups are staging health fairs almost daily through the weekend of August 13-14 to make an effort to insure that as many students as possible are fully inoculated
 
 
http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_
id=0E3237D3-80DD-4AF1-B237-6F7D42CB890B




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