By Richard Bammer

Most Vacaville-area public school districts will resume classes for the 2015-16 school year within three weeks, and for most incoming kindergarten and seventh-grade students it means immunization and vaccine records must be up to date before they walk into class.

Kendra Murthil, a public health nurse with Solano County Public Health, said the following shots are required for those affected students, unless they have some sort of exemption on file:

Kindergartners need Dtap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), polio, hepatitis B, MMR (mumps, measles, rubella), and varicella, or chicken pox, vaccines.

To enter seventh grade, students need a booster shot, Tdap (for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis).

via Are your child’s vaccinations up to date?.

By Jane Meredith Adams

Now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law – which he did on Tuesday – a bill that says parents can no longer refuse to vaccinate their children based on their personal opposition, schools and parents are parsing the fine print to put the new law into practice.

The law, Senate Bill 277, will roll out in phases, giving school staff time to sort out vaccination compliance issues and parents who oppose full immunization time to sort through their options.

Most school districts in California will be affected, with 47 out of 58 California counties in 2014-15 reporting they had kindergartners with personal belief exemptions to school-required vaccinations. (To find out how many kindergartners opted out of vaccinations at your school, click here.)

via What schools and parents need to know about the new vaccination law | EdSource.

By Jane Meredith Adams

The issue of mandatory vaccinations roiled a legislative hearing in Sacramento on Tuesday for the third time this month, and for the third time, state Senate committee members approved the proposed state law that would restrict exemptions to required school vaccinations.

Senate Bill 277, which would remove the “personal belief exemption” that allows parents to opt out of school vaccination laws, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 5-1 on Tuesday and moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill previously passed the Senate Health and the Senate Education committees.

via State vaccination bill passes Senate committee | EdSource#.VUEMCWctHGg#.VUEMCWctHGg.

By Katrina Schwartz

In a shifting economy without any assurances of success, there’s a lot of pressure on students to succeed in school. More and more kids are going to college and the application process is competitive. To help stand out, students are taking on tougher course loads, along with extracurricular activities and leadership roles. In order to pack everything in, some kids turn to prescription drugs like Adderall and Ritalin to stay awake and focus on school work and test prep. They can obtain the medication from doctors, peers and people they find online. However, many of these students, both in high school and in college, don’t know the physical or neurological ramifications of taking drugs that haven’t been prescribed to them by a doctor.

“We live in this culture of excellence,” said Michael McCutcheon, a counseling psychology phD candidate at New York University, on KQED’s Forum, “and if you are at a competitive high school and you know the culture really only celebrates success or money, then everything is riding on this test.” That overwhelming pressure – the feeling that every test and grade matters for ones future – combined with ease of access to these drugs makes their use seductive. Stanford Graduate School of Education senior lecturer Denise Pope found similar experiences among thousands%2

via Teaching Kids How to Learn Without Study Drugs | MindShift.

By Jane Meredith Adams

With huge numbers of California children still uninsured, schools are beginning to take the lead in letting families know that affordable health care coverage is available.

In school libraries and courtyards from Sacramento to Los Angeles and beyond, trained enrollment counselors have been invited to set up folding tables, commandeer desk space and corral parents before the Feb. 15 sign-up deadline for Covered California, the state’s online health insurance marketplace created under the federal Affordable Care Act.

And the outreach will increase. Under a new state law, all California schools must include in their 2015-16 enrollment packets information about options for health care coverage and how to get help with the sign-up process. The law, Assembly Bill 2706, authored by Roger Hernández, D-West Covina, is intended to reduce the number of children who are eligible for health insurance subsidies but remain uninsured.

via Schools help families enroll in Covered California, Medi-Cal | EdSource.

By Jane Meredith Adams

The largest outbreak of measles in California in years is prompting school officials to redouble their efforts to convince parents to vaccinate their children.

Sheri Coburn, the president-elect of the California School Nurses Organization, said the push for immunization is “one positive thing” to come from the rash of cases – now at 73 statewide – of the highly contagious and sometimes serious illness. The majority of cases are linked to exposure to the measles virus at two Disney theme parks.

“We continue to advocate for people to be vaccinated,” Coburn said, noting that three-quarters of those who contracted measles were “not vaccinated at all,” referring to the Disney outbreak.

via Schools encouraging parents to immunize students | EdSource#.VMfEO2ctHGg#.VMfEO2ctHGg.

By Evie Blad

Fifty-one cases of the measles can be traced to the patients’ recent visits to Disneyland, California public health officials said this week.

The quick spread of the preventable illness has once again shined a spotlight on families who opt their children out of vaccines required for school attendance and on the public policies that allow them to claim unspecified personal or philosophical exemptions from those requirements.

From a CNN story about the outbreak:

“Measles is a respiratory disease caused by a virus and spread through the air, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Measles starts with a fever, runny nose, cough, red eyes and sore throat, the CDC said.

The disease outbreak apparently surfaced when visitors reported coming down with measles after visiting the park December 15-20.

via Vaccine Exemptions Back in Spotlight After Measles Outbreak – Rules for Engagement – Education Week.

By Jane Meredith Adams

A slew of new laws affecting students’ physical, emotional and behavioral well-being will change how schools operate this year, in ways large and small. The laws regulate basic needs grants for truant students, pesticide use and expulsions for “willfully defiant” behavior, among other issues.

As of Jan. 1:

CalWORKS benefits restored for truants

Families that receive CalWORKS basic needs grants will no longer have their grants reduced if their child is truant.

While all parents of children who fail to attend school regularly are subject to fines and even jail time, families who receive CalWORKS assistance from the state had been additionally penalized for truancy by a reduction in grant funds. Assembly Bill 2382, written by Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, eliminates the “double truancy penalty” on low-income children and families. Families will no longer have to send their child’s attendance data to county CalWORKS offices.

via New laws to improve student health supports | EdSource#.VK62Ap3TnGg#.VK62Ap3TnGg.

By Jane Meredith Adams

It was a good week for the 90 students at Merritt Trace Elementary School in San Jose who climbed into a mobile eye exam van and emerged with the promise of a free pair of eyeglasses. But for thousands of students across the state who need glasses but don’t have them, it was another blurry week of not seeing the blackboard or the letters in a book.

Effective Jan. 1, two new state laws will clarify and expand the protocol for mandatory vision screening of students, but they don’t address the crux of a major children’s health conundrum: ensuring that students who fail the vision test actually get eyeglasses.

As many as 1 in 4 students in kindergarten through 12th grade has a vision problem, according to the American Public Health Association, but in some California schools, the majority of students in need of glasses don’t receive them, researchers said. In a 2011 study of 11,000 low-income 1st-graders in Southern California, published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 95 percent of students who needed eyeglasses didn’t have them, one year after their mandatory kindergarten vision screening.

via Schools work to improve vision health | EdSource.

By Joyce Tsai jtsai@bayareanewsgroup.com

Although tuberculosis has reached an all-time low in California, with a total of 2,170 cases reported in 2013, Bay Area public health officials say there are still challenges in fighting the preventable disease.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” said Pennan Barry, surveillance and epidemiology chief of the state Department of Public Healths Tuberculosis Control Branch.. He was speaking Wednesday at an event in recognition of World Tuberculosis Day at Curry International Tuberculosis Center in Oakland that drew public health leaders from Bay Area counties. World Tuberculosis Day was Monday.

In California, health officials say TB rates are nearly twice as high as the nation’s average, with 5.7 cases reported per 100,000 people. Last year, 2,170 cases were reported statewide compared to 2,189 cases the year before, a nearly 1 percent decrease.

via Health officials say more work needed to fight tuberculosis – ContraCostaTimes.com.