The elephant

California has enacted a law requiring updated Pertussis shots for all students entering 7^th-12^th grade in the 2011-2012 school year. It’s a monumental ordeal whose impact is difficult to stress enough to those unaffected: in short, best put, it’s HUGE. 

What it entails is first determining which students have the correct and current Tdap shot, and which students need it. For those whose records show they need it (keep in mind students only need to show shot records for when they enter the school, often times kindergarten – in other words, many are very outdated), they will be excluded from school next year until they do. What’s the problem with excluding kids from school, besides detracting from their learning days? Big money. Our school district will lose approximately $33 per student per day they are excluded for missing immunizations. Therefore, it is someone’s job – just whose, yet, hasn’t been defined – to ensure every student both gets the shot and turns in a current shot record before school starts.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of this issue, yesterday I counted and verified students for whom I have a record of a current Tdap shot at my middle school: 17 students, leaving well over 900 that need to be tracked down, many of whom won’t speak English, some of whom won’t speak Spanish, either. It is a large contributor to serious, rising tension among our staff as people get queasy thinking about August. I’ve known about this law for some time now, but it wasn’t until speaking with some employees of the district that have been here for decades (through new Hepatitis B and MMR requirements) that I began to grasp the severity of this law. There have been all sorts of horror stories about lines stretching for blocks on the first day of school when most people show up with their shot record, angry parents needing someone to scream at for their child’s exclusion, etc. The whole thing is a nightmare.