No shots, no school

With only two weeks remaining before a new law requiring all middle and high school students be immunized against pertussis or be excluded from school goes into effect, school officials are scrambling to meet the 30-day deadline they were given at the start of the school year.

Pertussis, or whooping cough, an extremely-contagious respiratory disease, reached epidemic proportions in California in 2010 — 8,000 cases and 10 deaths reported — prompting lawmakers to pass the new ruling which originally was to go into effect July 1 in all public and private schools in California.

A second bill gave the schools a 30-day respite but an additional bill, Senate Bill 614 — offering an additional respite until Jan. 1, 2012 — did not pass. The new law prompted Porterville Unified School District to hold several free-immunization clinics through the summer — the final three scheduled this week.

On Tuesday, several students were turned away for not showing up with parents or their immunization cards.

“I think we’re doing pretty good,” said PUSD school nurse Brenda Crowell. “We don’t have a percentage available as to how many are in compliance because records are kept at each individual school.”

But Crowell did say that an approximate 200 students need the immunization at Granite Hills, Strathmore and Monache high schools.

“We’ve been busy calling all parents and have been finding out that many of the students are already immunized,” Crowell said. “We’ve also had to turn some students away from our clinics because they showed up without the necessary consent — or because they were already immunized.”

PUSD is holding two more clinics from 3 to 6 p.m. at school libraries this week — today at Monache High and Thursday at Strathmore High.

The immunizations are free and open to all students from all school districts.

“If they are not from Porterville Unified, we ask that they come with a parent and with their immunization records,” Crowell said.

At Burton School District, school nurse Brenda Dhanens is reporting that the district’s students are 60 to 65 percent in compliance.

“We’re calling parents every two nights, reminding them to get their students immunized,” Dhanens said. “After Sept. 15, we will have to call the students in individually and talk about exclusions. We’re hoping it doesn’t come down to that and that everyone gets immunized.”

Lindsay Unified Superintendent Janet Kliegl said Lindsay is 85 percent compliant.

“We have 2,350 students who need it and only 360 have not gotten it,” she said. “We have a clinic planned for Sept. 1 and will offer it to students with parent waivers.”

However, only 200 doses will be available at the school’s clinic.

“Our goal is to have most of these done by Sept. 2,” Kliegl said. “If we still have 100 to 200 kids who need the vaccine, we will run another clinic. Otherwise, on Sept. 12 — because we started school earlier — we are going to have to start excluding kids from school. And we don’t want to do that.”

Contact Esther Avila at 784-5000, Ext. 1045 or eavila@portervillerecorder.com.