- 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
|