As many as 387 students in the Berkeley Unified School District may be unable to attend school starting Thursday as the 30-day grace period for seventh- through 12th-grade students to get their whooping cough vaccination comes to a close.
Schools in the district continue to urge students to arm themselves against the bacterial disease with the Tdap vaccination, as required by a new state law passed last year in response to the high number of California and nationwide outbreaks.
Berkeley High School will be providing vaccinations Thursday at its on-campus clinic for high school students over 18. If students are under 18, they will need a permission slip from a parent. Unvaccinated students without permission slips will either need to be picked up by parents or have their parents come and sign the permission slip, said Bill Huyett, the district’s superintendent.
According to district nurse Rikki Moreno, the latest report as of Wednesday shows that of the 387 students districtwide who have not yet been vaccinated, 280 of those students are at Berkeley High.
Overall, the district is up to a 92 percent compliance rate, meaning that 4,335 students out of the 4,722 target seventh through 12th graders have been vaccinated. This number includes students whose parents signed a personal belief exemption from immunization. Though specific data could not be accessed, Moreno said the number of exempted students does not seem to be significant.
As the deadline approached, there was a noticeable increase in immunization, Moreno said. The district hopes that all 280 remaining Berkeley High students will be vaccinated at the on-campus clinic, she said.
Huyett said that with this above 90 percent compliance rate, the district is “probably better than average.”
“I really want to give credit for the huge amount of effort and work they (the schools) have done in contacting parents and getting everyone to know (about this issue),” Huyett said.
Weiru Fang covers local schools.
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