Worcester excluding unvaccinated students from school

By Scott O’Connell
Telegram & Gazette Staff

Posted Oct 16, 2018 at 8:33 PM  

Updated Oct 17, 2018 at 8:34 AM

WORCESTER – In a move the district’s nursing director said is meant to expedite immunization of local schoolchildren, the district this year is barring unvaccinated students from coming to school.

Following state law that says students must be inoculated against certain diseases, Worcester has long had a policy of barring unimmunized students from school, according to Debra McGovern, the district’s coordinator of nursing services. But enforcement of that rule has been haphazard, with some schools excluding those students and others not, she said

This year, the district has become more strict.

According to a message that reportedly went out to families on Friday, the school department said students who hadn’t received the state’s required vaccinations as of Monday would not be permitted to attend school.

“What we’re trying to do is work with the kids” who haven’t been immunized, Ms. McGovern said. 

“We’re not just sending them home.”

She said many students with incomplete vaccination records who did show up on Monday were referred to the district’s Parent Information Welcome Center, where nurses have been running an immunization clinic. But Ms. McGovern also acknowledged some students have not been allowed to go to school.

“It’s hard to know right now” how many absences on Monday and Tuesday were due to the district’s new policy, she said, because some might have been for children who were actually sick.

Information about the total number of absences so far this week was unavailable from the district Tuesday afternoon.

As of Monday, Ms. McGovern said there were 2,146 students who had not received all their vaccinations – just under 10 percent of the district’s total enrollment. By Tuesday afternoon, however, she estimated the school department had either vaccinated or confirmed immunization records for about half of those children.

At Burncoat Middle School, for example, there were 203 noncompliant students on Monday, according to the school department; that number had been cut to 91 as of early Tuesday afternoon.

Worcester’s hard-line policy, meanwhile, would appear to be rare in the state, according to Paul Andrews, director of Professional Development and Government Services at the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

“As far as making it a mandate, I don’t think that’s happening much around the state,” he said, adding he believes many school administrators would likely want to avoid the issue, particularly as it relates to the liberties of parents. “They try to stay away from that conflict.

“I think it’s encouraged” to keep unvaccinated kids out of school, however, he added. “I’m certainly all for it.”

The fear in Worcester, for instance, according to Ms. McGovern, is that those unimmunized students have and will continue to spread diseases that threaten not just their classmates, but also their teachers and other school staff. Older employees especially, whose own immunizations are from decades ago, could be at risk, she said.

Worcester actually has a good vaccination compliance rate overall, according to the nursing department; that number reached a new high of 98 percent last year, for example. But it takes the district all year to identify and vaccinate those children, Ms. McGovern said; meanwhile, unvaccinated students are still attending school.

In the past, she said, schools have tried to contact families to let them know to immunize their children, with mixed results. “We’re not letting our nurses chase it all year (this year),” she said.

Ms. McGovern also said the district alerted families about the new policy even before the Friday message went out.

On Tuesday, one of the district’s major challenges was keeping up with the number of students who needed vaccinations. According to Ms. McGovern, nurses were running out of vaccines by the early afternoon. She said she had reached out to the city’health department for help with getting more shots delivered.

According to the state, students need to receive the DTaP/Tdap (for diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough), MMR (for measles, mumps and rubella), polio, Hepatitis B, and chickenpox vaccines.

Worcester’s policy does make exceptions for families with religious objections to vaccinations, as well as for children who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons. Ms. McGovern said very few of the district’s noncompliance cases were attributable to those reasons, however.