State stiffens vaccine rules

New requirements in effect for 2015-16 academic year

KINGSTON >> The 2015-16 school year begins next week with amended state Department of Health rules that require students to have vaccinations, or at least an appointment to get them, in order to start classes.

Children entering or attending kindergarten through grade 12 will be required to have two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, the department said in a written announcement. Children entering kindergarten through grade 5 will need to have five doses of the vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and a cellular pertussis.

Also, children entering kindergarten and grades 1, 6 and 7 must have four doses of the polio vaccine.

“Children who have not yet received all required vaccine doses must schedule appointments with their health care providers to complete the vaccine series in order to remain in school,” the department said.

“These revisions are based on the most current science and will give our children the best protection we can provide

from devastating diseases,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said in a prepared statement.

“With these up-to-date school immunization requirements in place, New York will be aligned with federal standards on childhood vaccines.”

Ulster County Health Commissioner Dr. Carol Smith said the new rules put an emphasis on when children will be in groups rather than allowing parents to schedule the shots based on age.

“Some vaccines have been required between the ages of four and six,” Smith said

Monday.

“Now they’re looking at it more in terms of when they’re starting school. So for prekindergarten, day care, nursery school, pre-K and that kind of thing, four doses of that diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine are required prior to starting the school term.”

Smith said the state also has made it easier for school districts to determine whether parents are complying with the regulations.

“The schools now do have access to the state immunization reporting system,” she said. “It’s all electronic and online now.”

Anytime doctors administers a vaccine to people under 18, they are “supposed to be entering it into this system,” Smith said. “So now the schools ... can go on and look up whether [a student] really does have the required vaccinations.”

Kingston Superintendent of Schools Paul Padalino said the change is not significant for his district because it has been diligent in the past year in notifying parents of vaccination requirements.

“For each of the new registrants that are coming in, what [the nursing staff] is finding that most of the people already have this and

know about this,” Padalino said.

“Last year was one of the years we really took a look at it,” he said. “... Last year ... [we had a] campaign to make sure parents were aware, ‘Your kid is going to have to be excluded if we don’t get these things.”

The New Paltz school district’s director of health services, Toni Woody, said the state change could inconvenience some parents, but “the nurses are working hard to make sure everybody ... is within compliance.”

Woody said parents “may indeed need to go back and schedule other appointments

for whatever the third or fourth vaccine is.”

Smith said the difficult part of the vaccination effort is getting parents to take them seriously if a certain disease has not been prevalent for years.

“The farther out we get from the times when we had the vaccinations available, we do forget people develop some serious side effects to these viral infections, to the point of either permanent disability or death,” the commissioner said. “Now that we’ve been lulled into an era with vaccinations, we forget how serious these diseases can be.”