D.C. Plans to EXPEL CHILDREN From School If They Don’t Get The Covid Vaccine thumbnail

D.C. Plans to EXPEL CHILDREN From School If They Don’t Get The Covid Vaccine

By The Geller Report

The city outlined a plan to get students vaccinated this summer, saying they can’t attend school next year without their shots

By Perry Stein, Washington Post, June 30, 2022:

The District outlined an urgent plan this week to vaccinate nearly 30,000 students — more than 25 percent of the public and private school population — who are behind on their routine shots over the summer so that they can legally attend school in August.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has vowed to enforce for the upcoming academic year a long-standing but historically ignored law that says students need to be up to date on their vaccines against diseases including measles, polio and whooping cough to enroll in schools. But the promise to enforce the mandate has underscored just how many students in the District are behind on their vaccinations, and how far compliance rates plummeted in the pandemic when many families skipped doctors’ appointments.

According to city data, around 75 percent of public school students are current with their routine vaccines, with students in the wealthiest wards having the highest compliance rates. If the city outreach efforts to vaccinate students are ineffective, scores of students — likely a disproportionate number of low-income students of color — would be kept at home during a school year where students are already expected to still be recovering from the academic fallouts from the pandemic.