By JUNO OGLE
Daily Press Staff
The Silver Consolidated School District saw a slight decrease in enrollment last month due to the loss of several students lacking required vaccinations.
Children are required to have a half-dozen vaccinations by the time they enter kindergarten. They include vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, or DTaP; polio; measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR; haemophilus influenza type B or Hib; hepatitis A and B; pneumococcal, or PCV; and varicella.
Before entering seventh grade, children are required to have one dose each of vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, or the Tdap vaccine, and meningococcal ACWY.
Because of the difficulties people might have had in accessing health care during the pandemic, the New Mexico Department of Health relaxed those requirements, said Cindy Barris, Silver Schools associate superintendent for instruction. But for the 2022-23 school year, the department decided it was time to get back on track.
The vaccine requirements for the older students entering middle school have caused much of the problem in the Silver District.
“That’s the one that’s regularly missed,” Barris said. “When kids are babies, they get [vaccines] regularly, because you have to go for the well-child check and all that. But you don’t have a well-child check when they go into teenage years. Parents have to remember, and sometimes being a parent is hard.”
She said she had even once forgotten about the teenage vaccines herself, until getting a notice from the school. And because of the pandemic and the relaxed requirements, some students have gone several years without them.
“We had a couple that were seniors that never got that vaccination, and came to us from someplace else,” Barris said.
School nurses are granted public health authority in New Mexico, and have access to student immunization records. When a student doesn’t have the required vaccinations, the nurse notifies school administrators, Barris said. The nurse is the only district staff member who sees student health records.
The Silver District mailed notifications to families of 15 students starting last August about the needed vaccinations. The state did give some leniency this year, giving districts until spring before they had to drop students from enrollment. Five students were able to get those shots by the time Barris made a report to the Board of Education on March 20.
She told the Daily Press on Tuesday that 11 of those students have now returned to school.
Barris said the district understands some parents may have uncertainties about vaccinations since the pandemic, but she emphasized that a COVID-19 vaccine has not been added to the requirements.
“We just want our parents to know it’s nothing new,” she said. “It’s the same DTaP, MMR — it’s nothing new.”
Students in need of vaccinations can get them either through the family’s physician or through the county’s Department of Health office at 2610 N. Silver St., Barris said.
“They do same-day appointments and they do it for free,” she said of the Health Department. “We don’t want this to be a financial burden on families. That’s very important to us in Silver Schools.”
Students who are dropped from enrollment can’t simply take virtual classes until they get the vaccines, either.
“If the student is not enrolled, they’re not enrolled,” Barris said.
Likewise, they can’t enroll in another school, whether public, private or even online.
“All schools in New Mexico — whether it be charter, parochial, online — all students are required to have these vaccinations,” she said.
Exemptions can be given for medical or religious reasons, but those must be applied for and approved by the state Health Department. According to the NMDOH, in 2019, 47 students in Grant County, or 1 percent of the county’s children aged 4 to 18, were granted exemptions.
Moving forward, the district plans to make it even easier for students to get their vaccines before the start of the school year.
“Next year, when kids pick up their registration at the middle school, if you don’t have your required vaccination, we won’t be able to give you your schedule,” she said. “But we will have a vaccine clinic there.”
The clinic will be run by the New Mexico Department of Health, and the shots will be free of charge, she said.
Juno Ogle may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.