Glendale Unified to act on new state vaccine rules
While the vast majority of students attending Glendale schools have received their immunizations, a law that went into effect this month prohibits parents who are enrolling their children in public or private schools for the first time from becoming exempt from vaccinations due to personal beliefs.
Senate Bill 277 eliminates parents’ ability to file a personal-belief waiver that would exempt them from vaccinating their children. For parents who are enrolling their children in Glendale Unified schools, but do not want to vaccinate their children, school officials say those parents will need to pursue home-school options.
Across Glendale’s roughly 30 schools, 98.7% of the 26,280 students are already vaccinated or in the process of becoming fully immunized, said Kelly King, assistant superintendent of Glendale Unified, during a recent school board meeting.
Students must be vaccinated for polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B and chickenpox, King said.
Approximately 1.3% of Glendale students have received either a medical or personal belief exemption, and have not been immunized.
Twenty students are exempt from immunizations because of medical conditions, while the parents of 315 students have obtained exemptions due to personal beliefs, King said.
Of those 315 students, district administrators will contact the parents of 37 of them because they are currently in either preschool or sixth grade, and they must be fully immunized before they begin kindergarten or seventh grade during the 2016-17 school year to comply with the new law, King said.
For 103 students who are already enrolled in seventh through 12th grades, they will not need to be immunized because they have already entered seventh grade.
“Their personal-belief exemptions will stand until they graduate from GUSD or other schools,” King said.
School board member Armina Gharpetian asked King what parents, particularly those coming from out of state or out of the country, would need to do to enroll their children in Glendale schools.
“To enroll in our schools, they have to be on their way to being fully vaccinated, which means they have to begin their vaccination process. They don’t have to be fully completed with it. We let them also know that if this is something that they feel very strongly about, then they do need to pursue home-school options,” King said.
“I see a huge problem with that,” Gharpetian said. “But let’s see what happens in the future.”
Meanwhile, Christine Walters, school board president, noted that the school district must comply with the new law.
“It’s a good reminder that this was not our idea, and we’re just implementing the law here, regardless of how we feel,” Walters said.
School officials are also mailing information packets to parents and directing them to the district’s website, www.gust.net, where there is a list of required vaccinations under the “Enrollment Requirements” tab.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
