Vaccines for students

While we have all suffered through this horrific pandemic, many of us worry especially about its effect on public schools. We want our schools to be open, but we are concerned about our students who are so vulnerable amid the growing number of infections on children of all ages. There is nothing new about administering vaccines in schools.

“In 1922, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled in Zucht v. King that states had the right to require kids to be vaccinated to attend school in order to protect public health. This ruling revolved around a big idea: states have the right to deny access to schools to protect the public health” (https://time.com/6112328/vaccination-in-schools-history/). Many school districts do require a range of vaccinations for admission and have done so for many years. Schools were directly involved with testing the polio vaccine and it became a requirement for all students in the ‘50s. According to the article above in TIME, “It is worth noting that while there were about 15,000 cases of paralysis caused by polio each year in the 1950s, that dropped to fewer than 10 by the 1970s.” While COVID infections are not as serious as polio, should Adams County schools consider offering them?

As a former member of the Upper Adams school board, I wanted to see what we could do to address the COVID problem, and I called our school board president and asked about the vaccination rate in our student population. I was shocked and saddened to learn that only 20% of our elementary students have been vaccinated and 27% of the students in the upper grades. When I asked whether if might be possible to improve those numbers by offering vaccines in our school nurse office, I was told there were many reasons why this was not possible. I called the Superintendent Wesley Doll and asked the same question. Superintendent Doll was more responsive and said he would look into the problem.

It seemed logical to me that if all a student needed was parental permission to walk down to the see the nurse and get vaccinated, it should improve the ratio of students who are protected from the virus. So, I didn’t give up, and decided to explore the situation in all our Adams County schools. I learned a lot. We have six school districts in our county, and when I contacted each of them to see if there was a similar problem, I found that most Administrations don’t even know the vaccination rates of their students.

Larry Redding, former interim superintendent at Fairfield School District, was sorry to say that they don’t have the data I sought because it is not required, and they are overwhelmed with the amount of data requirements they already have to report to the state. The number of cases is huge in Fairfield. The rate of COVID infections among their students has caused a crisis in the schools which may require them to return to remote classrooms. Dr. Redding agreed that making the vaccines available in the nurse’s office might increase the number of takers. He noted that every school is required to have at least one certified nurse on campus, and he believed any certified nurse could give a vaccination. That may not be a problem, but he made clear that the number of problems they are dealing with is daunting.

I also heard from Dr. Jason Perrin of the Gettysburg School District, Dr. Sharon Perry of Conewago Valley, and Dr. Shane Hotchkiss of Bermudian Springs who do not track the data on vaccines. Dr. Hotchkiss noted that the number of parents who are worried about vaccines is significant, and they do not wish to fuel that concern.

Dr. Christopher Bigger of Littlestown School District said he did not have information on the number of students who were vaccinated against COVID, but he told me that their district did offer the flu vaccine in September for all students who had parental permission and he thought they had about 100 takers this year. He agreed to consider whether it might be possible for them to offer this vaccine as well.

Dr. Doll of Upper Adams planned to confer with Dr. Bigger about this question. All the superintendents I spoke with are concerned about this problem. But few seemed to think that offering the vaccine in their own nurse’s office was a solution worth exploring.

A lot of the reluctance to consider this option may be because of the likely opposition from parents. Although this opposition may be expected, if a COVID vaccine in the nurse’s office is made available but not required, I still think it’s worth the try.

Elaine Jones lives in Arendtsville. She founded the Gettysburg Democracy for America and still serves on the Education Task Force.