More than a month after the start of the school year, D.C. is attempting to enforce a long-standing childhood vaccine mandate – but concerns over incomplete and messy data are hindering enforcement and causing local officials to question the policy’s efficacy.
For the first time this school year, D.C. is attempting to enforce a “no shot, no school policy.” While it’s always theoretically been the law that students must be compliant with the city’s routine childhood vaccination mandate in order to attend school, D.C. officials made it a point this year that the policy would actually be enforced, meaning students who were not caught up on routine pediatric vaccinations would be excluded from school.
However, when that first enforcement deadline rolled around on Tuesday, school leaders and D.C. Councilmembers scrutinized the city’s enforcement system, citing problematic reporting databases and poor communication they say ultimately harms already at-risk students and overwhelmed educators.“We’ve struggled to get accurate data from the Department of Health,” said Barry Brinkley, the chief of staff at D.C. Prep, a public charter school, during a D.C. Council roundtable on the policy on Tuesday afternoon. “Without accurate data… it is very difficult to be strategic in our communications for our families and hold them accountable.”