Vaccine law decried by some on North Coast, applauded by others Vaccine law decried by some on North Coast, applauded by others

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed controversial legislation to impose one of the strictest school vaccination laws in the country, eliminating an exemption that hundreds of Sonoma County parents have used to forgo childhood vaccinations for their children based on philosophical beliefs.

The new law, which takes effect July 1 next year, will require students attending all public and private schools, day-care centers and similar institutions to be immunized against 10 specified communicable diseases unless they’ve obtained a medical exemption.

Opponents already are vowing to challenge the legislation in court, saying it improperly usurps the right of parents to choose what’s right for their children - a view held by many in the North Bay, which has some of the state’s highest refusal rates for childhood vaccination.

“We’re not going to give up,” said Debra Baretta, a Petaluma mother of three, who traveled to Sacramento on Tuesday to join a silent vigil opposing the new bill. “This bill is unconstitutional. It doesn’t allow (certain) children the right to a public education.”

Her children, 13, 14 and 15, will essentially be grandfathered under an earlier vaccine law and will likely not have to be vaccinated. But the law has still prompted Baretta to consider taking her kids out of public school next year in protest.

“I’m fighting because this is wrong,” she said. “We should always have informed choice and consent when our children are having a medical procedure.”

The law’s approval, however, has been hailed by the public health community as well as families whose immune-compromised children are put at greater risk of infection by those who choose not to vaccinate.

Windsor mother Cindy Schalich, whose 19-year-old son, Ryder, has a neurological disease for which the treatment lowers his resistance to disease, said she’s continually concerned that living in an area with a disproportionate number of unvaccinated people puts him at risk.

“When we’re in this population, with unvaccinated folks, he’s exposed to more potential things that can just take him down,” she said.

Passed in its final form by the state Senate on Monday and signed by Brown on Tuesday morning, SB277 means parents will no longer be able to enroll their children in school or day care without a suite of childhood shots against contagious diseases such as mumps, measles, pertussis, rubella, polio and chicken pox. Medical exemptions would still be granted to children with serious health issues. The law does not apply to home-schooled children or those in independent study.

Children already in school, depending on their grade, may be spared from having to undergo vaccinations for some years yet, as the law requires a check of inoculation records only as students advance from one “grade span” to another, defined as birth to preschool, kindergarten to sixth grade, and seventh to 12th grade.

Thus, students already in primary grades won’t be required to catch up on their vaccinations until they enter seventh grade, said a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health.

And students entering kindergarten this fall can still obtain personal belief exemptions as long as their paperwork is filed by Jan. 1 next year.

“This bill takes the long view of ‘How do we get people vaccinated in California and prevent diseases from spreading?’?” Sonoma County Health Officer Karen Milman said, “and if that takes a couple of years to roll in, it’s still better than our current circumstance.”

Introduced by state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, and supported by all of the North Coast’s legislators, the bill arose from a recent resurgence of pertussis, also known and whooping cough, and, especially, an outbreak of measles traced to Disneyland that sickened 131 people in California between December and April of this year, according to the state Department of Public Health.

At the same time, use of the personal belief exemption first made available in 1961 has been on the rise, leaving many schools without the vaccination rates needed to protect the general population against diseases like measles, a concept known as “herd immunity.”

“The science is clear that vaccines dramatically protect children against a number of infectious and dangerous diseases,” Brown said in his signing message. “While it’s true that no medical intervention is without risk, the evidence shows that immunization powerfully benefits and protects the community.”

Until now, only Mississippi and West Virginia required all students without medical exemptions to obtain vaccinations. All other states have religious belief exemptions, while 20 have philosophical or personal belief exemptions, as well, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Parents who opt out of vaccinating their kids - many of whom only reject some inoculations and not others - say they fear adverse side effects and reactions to the drugs or to chemical preservatives used in certain vaccine formulations.

The new law is expected to force hard choices on such parents who must now decide whether to submit their children to vaccinations or find alternative education settings for them.

Such is the case with Elise Planty, of Sebastopol and Covelo, who has a 5-year-old in preschool and a 2-year-old. She said she is “one of many people” who are not opposed to vaccines on principal but still have serious concerns about opting for all the required shots.

Her 5-year-old will be enrolled in kindergarten before the law takes effect, but she said she likely wouldn’t enroll her 2-year-old in the same school when the time comes because she opposes the mandatory vaccinations.

“I definitely feel I’m between a rock and a hard place,” she said. “There are so many amazing schools in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. I would love for (my daughter) to be a part of that, but I can’t swallow following the exact vaccination schedule they have. I feel there will have to be a whole new uprising of education, of people creating whole new education systems and communities.”

Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, who signed on as a co-author of the bill, said that while he has heard from and met with parents on both sides of the issue, he believes the law will “benefit the health of millions of schoolkids.”

“I think that what we’ve seen is that all signs point to the fact that vaccinations are safe for kids,” he said.

McGuire noted amendments in the law that allowed for homeschooling and independent study as options for parents opposed to vaccination.

Sonoma County and the North Coast are among several regions in California with clusters of under-immunized students, according to public and private surveys.

State health officials say 36 schools across Sonoma County are considered to lack sufficiently high vaccinations rates to protect the public from measles outbreak.

Under-immunization is also a critical problem for those with children who are too young or who have medical problems that prevent them from being vaccinated.

Santa Rosa resident Vanessa Walsh, 30, receives treatments that suppress her immune system after receiving a kidney transplant when she was 22. She said the low rate of vaccinations in the county scares her since contracting a disease like measles could be deadly.

“It makes me feel frightened. It makes me feel like moving. But my family is here, I have a nephew on the way,” she said. “Now that the law is passed I feel better about it.”

At the Sebastopol Independent Charter School, where only 23 percent of incoming 2014 kindergartners had been immunized against measles, mumps and rubella, parents have been asking questions for weeks about the pending legislation, Operations Manager John Azzizzi said.

“There are obviously, in Sonoma County, many parents who feel very strongly about this law,” Azzizzi said, “and we, in the school, we have to take a neutral perspective, because we have parents on both sides: parents who think all students should be vaccinated and parents for whom personal belief exemptions are really important to them.”

He and several other local school administrators and a representative for the state Department of Education said they were still trying to sort out the implications of the bill, especially with regard to whether kids entering seventh grade would be required to obtain all childhood vaccinations they may have missed.

State Department of Public Health spokesman Carlos Villatoro said that was indeed the case, though the law specifically permits seventh-graders to start school even if they haven’t completed the full series of three hepatitis B vaccinations required for immunity.

Twin Hills Unified School District Superintendent Barbara Bickford said she expected there would be a small decline in kindergarten and seventh-grade enrollment at SunRidge School in Sebastopol, a K-8 Waldorf-inspired charter where 26 out of 44 kindergartners from the 2014 class were covered by personal belief exemptions.

But across the grades, the law should have little effect, she said, and “I don’t anticipate a big impact in the rest of the district schools.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story. You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB. You can reach Staff Writer Jamie Hansen at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @JamieHansen.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed controversial legislation to impose one of the strictest school vaccination laws in the country, eliminating an exemption that hundreds of Sonoma County parents have used to forgo childhood vaccinations for their children based on philosophical beliefs.

The new law, which takes effect July 1 next year, will require students attending all public and private schools, day-care centers and similar institutions to be immunized against 10 specified communicable diseases unless they’ve obtained a medical exemption.

Opponents already are vowing to challenge the legislation in court, saying it improperly usurps the right of parents to choose what’s right for their children - a view held by many in the North Bay, which has some of the state’s highest refusal rates for childhood vaccination.

“We’re not going to give up,” said Debra Baretta, a Petaluma mother of three, who traveled to Sacramento on Tuesday to join a silent vigil opposing the new bill. “This bill is unconstitutional. It doesn’t allow (certain) children the right to a public education.”

Her children, 13, 14 and 15, will essentially be grandfathered under an earlier vaccine law and will likely not have to be vaccinated. But the law has still prompted Baretta to consider taking her kids out of public school next year in protest.

“I’m fighting because this is wrong,” she said. “We should always have informed choice and consent when our children are having a medical procedure.”

The law’s approval, however, has been hailed by the public health community as well as families whose immune-compromised children are put at greater risk of infection by those who choose not to vaccinate.

Windsor mother Cindy Schalich, whose 19-year-old son, Ryder, has a neurological disease for which the treatment lowers his resistance to disease, said she’s continually concerned that living in an area with a disproportionate number of unvaccinated people puts him at risk.

“When we’re in this population, with unvaccinated folks, he’s exposed to more potential things that can just take him down,” she said.

Passed in its final form by the state Senate on Monday and signed by Brown on Tuesday morning, SB277 means parents will no longer be able to enroll their children in school or day care without a suite of childhood shots against contagious diseases such as mumps, measles, pertussis, rubella, polio and chicken pox. Medical exemptions would still be granted to children with serious health issues. The law does not apply to home-schooled children or those in independent study.

Children already in school, depending on their grade, may be spared from having to undergo vaccinations for some years yet, as the law requires a check of inoculation records only as students advance from one “grade span” to another, defined as birth to preschool, kindergarten to sixth grade, and seventh to 12th grade.

Thus, students already in primary grades won’t be required to catch up on their vaccinations until they enter seventh grade, said a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health.

And students entering kindergarten this fall can still obtain personal belief exemptions as long as their paperwork is filed by Jan. 1 next year.

“This bill takes the long view of ‘How do we get people vaccinated in California and prevent diseases from spreading?’?” Sonoma County Health Officer Karen Milman said, “and if that takes a couple of years to roll in, it’s still better than our current circumstance.”

Introduced by state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, and supported by all of the North Coast’s legislators, the bill arose from a recent resurgence of pertussis, also known and whooping cough, and, especially, an outbreak of measles traced to Disneyland that sickened 131 people in California between December and April of this year, according to the state Department of Public Health.

At the same time, use of the personal belief exemption first made available in 1961 has been on the rise, leaving many schools without the vaccination rates needed to protect the general population against diseases like measles, a concept known as “herd immunity.”

“The science is clear that vaccines dramatically protect children against a number of infectious and dangerous diseases,” Brown said in his signing message. “While it’s true that no medical intervention is without risk, the evidence shows that immunization powerfully benefits and protects the community.”

Until now, only Mississippi and West Virginia required all students without medical exemptions to obtain vaccinations. All other states have religious belief exemptions, while 20 have philosophical or personal belief exemptions, as well, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Parents who opt out of vaccinating their kids - many of whom only reject some inoculations and not others - say they fear adverse side effects and reactions to the drugs or to chemical preservatives used in certain vaccine formulations.

The new law is expected to force hard choices on such parents who must now decide whether to submit their children to vaccinations or find alternative education settings for them.

Such is the case with Elise Planty, of Sebastopol and Covelo, who has a 5-year-old in preschool and a 2-year-old. She said she is “one of many people” who are not opposed to vaccines on principal but still have serious concerns about opting for all the required shots.

Her 5-year-old will be enrolled in kindergarten before the law takes effect, but she said she likely wouldn’t enroll her 2-year-old in the same school when the time comes because she opposes the mandatory vaccinations.

“I definitely feel I’m between a rock and a hard place,” she said. “There are so many amazing schools in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. I would love for (my daughter) to be a part of that, but I can’t swallow following the exact vaccination schedule they have. I feel there will have to be a whole new uprising of education, of people creating whole new education systems and communities.”

Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, who signed on as a co-author of the bill, said that while he has heard from and met with parents on both sides of the issue, he believes the law will “benefit the health of millions of schoolkids.”

“I think that what we’ve seen is that all signs point to the fact that vaccinations are safe for kids,” he said.

McGuire noted amendments in the law that allowed for homeschooling and independent study as options for parents opposed to vaccination.

Sonoma County and the North Coast are among several regions in California with clusters of under-immunized students, according to public and private surveys.

State health officials say 36 schools across Sonoma County are considered to lack sufficiently high vaccinations rates to protect the public from measles outbreak.

Under-immunization is also a critical problem for those with children who are too young or who have medical problems that prevent them from being vaccinated.

Santa Rosa resident Vanessa Walsh, 30, receives treatments that suppress her immune system after receiving a kidney transplant when she was 22. She said the low rate of vaccinations in the county scares her since contracting a disease like measles could be deadly.

“It makes me feel frightened. It makes me feel like moving. But my family is here, I have a nephew on the way,” she said. “Now that the law is passed I feel better about it.”

At the Sebastopol Independent Charter School, where only 23 percent of incoming 2014 kindergartners had been immunized against measles, mumps and rubella, parents have been asking questions for weeks about the pending legislation, Operations Manager John Azzizzi said.

“There are obviously, in Sonoma County, many parents who feel very strongly about this law,” Azzizzi said, “and we, in the school, we have to take a neutral perspective, because we have parents on both sides: parents who think all students should be vaccinated and parents for whom personal belief exemptions are really important to them.”

He and several other local school administrators and a representative for the state Department of Education said they were still trying to sort out the implications of the bill, especially with regard to whether kids entering seventh grade would be required to obtain all childhood vaccinations they may have missed.

State Department of Public Health spokesman Carlos Villatoro said that was indeed the case, though the law specifically permits seventh-graders to start school even if they haven’t completed the full series of three hepatitis B vaccinations required for immunity.

Twin Hills Unified School District Superintendent Barbara Bickford said she expected there would be a small decline in kindergarten and seventh-grade enrollment at SunRidge School in Sebastopol, a K-8 Waldorf-inspired charter where 26 out of 44 kindergartners from the 2014 class were covered by personal belief exemptions.

But across the grades, the law should have little effect, she said, and “I don’t anticipate a big impact in the rest of the district schools.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story. You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB. You can reach Staff Writer Jamie Hansen at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @JamieHansen.