The Heartland Charter School in Kern County has several dream outings on the calendar this spring, including in-n-out burger visits, a journey by train from Amtrak along the central coast and a performance in the morning of “Harry Potter and The Cursed Child” at Hollywood Pantes.
Outings may not seem unusual, but Heartland's student body differs from other California schools in a major way.
According to an analysis of the Times, 5% of the 810 students of Heartland kindergarten received all their childhood vaccines, and 9% were vaccinated against measles, according to an analysis of the data of the data that California schools bring to the state. THE vaccination rate For kindergarten students through last year, it was 93.7%.
Heartland is among the largest schools with independent study charter in California, which allow parents to enroll their children in the public school system, but avoid the strict requirements of state vaccines by educating them at home or online.
Such programs – sometimes called home charters, online charters or virtual charters – have exploded during the COVVI -19 pandemic and offer more flexibility than traditional school.
They also serve as a legal refuge for Californian parents who do not want to vaccinate their children or leave the public school system. Certain public health services in the Golden State attribute the drop in vaccination rates to such programs, which may include hundreds or even thousands of children.
Schools financed on the stock market are among the remaining weak points in the rigorous laws of infant vaccination of California, which legislators tightened after a measles epidemic that started in Disneyland in 2014 reported more than 300 people.
In 2015, legislators adopted the Senate 277 bill, which Prohibition of exemptions from personal beliefs For infant vaccinations. In 2019, they tightened Examination of medical exemptions For non -vaccinated children. The laws always allow parents to skip vaccinations for children enrolled in independent study programs and “do not receive instruction in class”.
But the laws on state vaccination do not specify what “class teaching” means, including if students should be vaccinated if they take courses in person offered by their school or by a third -party supplier, or if they attend activities punishable by school such as excursions in the field, football or the ball.
“There is a huge amount of gray zone,” said Jeff Rice, founder and director of Assn. Personalized, or Aplus +learning schools and services, a commercial group for charter schools with students who are pursuing a mixture of learning, at home and online.
As part of the California education code, a school is “classless” if 80% of learning occurs outside campus.
When California has tightened its vaccination laws, Rice said he had put pressure on vaccination requirements for students who do not attend traditional schools in person five days a week. Rather than defining what meant “the instruction not based on the classroom”, he said, the state left this decision to the school boards and the county education offices which regulate the schools with a charter.
Among the 100 schools which are members of Aplus +, said Rice, two thirds of students take lessons in person at least one day per week.
“Vaccinations are a problem for a small percentage of parents who have very strong and passionate feelings about it,” said Rice. Schools with low vaccination rates, he said, “are a reflection of the values of this individual community”.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Health oversees the Californian law which “describes the rules for compulsory vaccinations”. A public spokesperson Health said that the Department “had no regulatory authority on this issue” and added that “decisions on students' participation in school outings or athletics are decided at the local level”.
The United States is in the middle of the largest measles epidemic in six years, with 800 cases and three deaths reported in 25 states, including nine cases in California.
Dr. Shannon Udovic-Constant, pediatrician in San Francisco and president of California Medical Assn., According to measles is “incredibly contagious”, spreading when someone coughs or sneezes and persistent in the air for two hours. She said that 90% of non -vaccinated people exposed will contract measles.
To be not vaccinated, she said, “is a risk, and it is a risk that you cannot see.”
The vast majority of non -vaccinated students are registered with individualized education plans or independent study programs, which under the law of the state means that they do not have to be vaccinated. The number of students who have declared medical exemptions granted by doctors are very low.
Most of the largest online charter schools in the state had low vaccination rates, but not all. River Springs Charter in the County of Riverside, which reported a mixture of online education and in person, said that 77% of its 1,036 kindergarten students were up to date on all their vaccines last year, according to state data.
Feather River Charter School in the county of Sutter, which is part of the Sequoia Grove Charter Alliance in northern California, state regulators told 100% “classless”. Last year, 18% of the 321 students in the school's kindergarten were up to date on all their vaccines and 21% were vaccinated against measles. Two other alliance schools also declared global vaccination rates below 20% last year.
The Alliance website includes a calendar with a “game meeting for teenagers” in Elk Grove, regular library visits and a ball evening on the theme of the masquerade. A video published on Facebook by Feather River shows a large group of children who are witnessing a recent excursion in the field in Shasta Caverns.
At Visions in Education in the County of Sacramento, 40% of the 580 students in the school's kindergarten were up to date on all their blows last year and 44% were vaccinated against measles, according to state data. The school requires that students of seventh year and more to obtain their Booster TDAP, which offers high immunity against tetanus, diphtheria and darling, or darling. On its Instagram account, the school has marketed a college football club and an excursion to the ice skate.
The representatives of Heartland and the Sequoia Grove Alliance did not respond to requests for comments.
“As a long -standing party of the California public school community, our commitment to responsibility includes the continuation of state and federal laws,” visions in Education Surint. Steve Olmos said in a statement sent by e-mail.
Olmos did not answer questions that students must be vaccinated to participate in field trips or group sports, but said that the school had a “complete system in place to ask families in the history of their students' vaccine at several times in their registration”.
Former state senator Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat who wrote California's vaccine laws, said regularly “certainly violates the spirit of the law”. However, he said that the low vaccination rates in online charter schools did not surprise him because he knew that when he wrote SB 277 that all parents would not vaccinate their children.
“Having an online school or an independent study program where they are not at school with all the other children was a deliberate option that we provided to these families,” said Pan. But, he said, bringing together a cohort of non-vaccinated children prepares them in danger of contracting transmitted diseases.
“They shouldn't do it regularly or frequently,” he said.
Lances Christensen, vice-president of education policy and government affairs at the California Policy Center, a conservative reflection group, challenged the idea that some schools and parents use online programs to avoid vaccination requirements while operating similarly to traditional classrooms in person.
“There are no shortcomings in the law,” said Christensen. “They use the legal means they have to do what they want. Whether I agree or not, I don't care … I am not the father of everyone.”
Christensen, who presented himself without success for the superintendent of public education in 2022, said he had vaccinated his five children and believe in the importance of certain infant vaccinations.
Like many families during the pandemic, he also enrolled his children in virtual charter schools when their schools in the Sacramento region have remained closed. Many families, he said, choose these schools for various reasons, whether they are linked to the vaccine or because they think they offer a better education than traditional public schools in person.
Tom Reusser, superintendent of the County Sutter schools, said that these virtual schools were largely responsible for the rate of immunization of the county's childhood, which, at 73%, is the the lowest state. Most traditional public schools in person in his district have declared largely 95%vaccination rates, he said.
“Pull the charters and we are going very well,” said Reusse.
County Public Health Managers of Sutter also assigned their drop in vaccination rates to a “small number of charter schools and independent study students”. The “majority” of students enrolled in these schools do not live in the county, they said.
Home and online charters can register students from their original counties and surrounding counties. Feather River, for example, serves students from Sutter, Butte, Yuba, Place, Sacramento, Yolo and Colusa, according to the School website. Kern county schools such that Heartland can also register students from San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Kings, Tulare and Inyo, a potential attendance area of hundreds of kilometers.
In Heartland, parents are invited to keep their children at home if someone in cleaning is sick, but vaccination requirements are not mentioned. In a Q&R published on his website, Feather River, the County Sutter school, notes that, because the school is an “independent study program without instruction in class”, vaccinations are not necessary.
“Although you are not invited to submit a vaccination form at the time of registration, it does not need to be complete and will not affect your registration status,” said the website.
