NORMAN — Every year, the shot vile for some students runs dry, with parents opting to exempt their children from the recommended school shots.
Sending a handful of students to school, however, with out-of-date shot records isn’t an easy “A.”
For parents, saying “no” to the needle means a stack of paperwork, signatures and an approved reason.
Parents must fill out a form provided by the Oklahoma State Department of Health Immunization, which is available at each school for their children to be exempt. Within the form, parents must cite one of three reasons — religious, medical or personal — for forgoing immunization.
Religious and medical reasons must be signed either by a religious leader or a doctor. For a personal reason, parents must provide a strong argument surpassing a blanket “no,” said Sharon Howard, Norman Public Schools nurse.
“The parent can’t just put, ‘I don’t want my child to have a vaccine.’ They have to put thought behind it,” Howard said. “I think a lot of the times they opt out because of misunderstanding. Any medication can have an adverse reaction.”
A survey of local school districts showed that only a handful of parents each year sway away from the needle.
While Howard could not give specific numbers for Norman because of a computer glitch, she said less than 1 percent of the student body is not vaccinated for school required shots this year.
Usually, there are about two or three students per school, she said.
“Because kids start shots so young, by the time those kids come to school, the parents who don’t want them to be immunized have already made up their minds,” Howard said, adding that if this number grows, the safeguard of “herd immunity” — the idea of a lower risk of catching an illness because others are vaccinated — would diminish.
At Washington Public Schools, less than six of the 920 students enrolled are exempt from vaccinations, Superintendent A.J. Brewer said.
Barry Damrill, superintendent of Little Axe Public Schools, said he isn’t certain how many students within the district are exempt from vaccinations.
And at Noble Public Schools, three — all at the lower elementary — of a student population of 2,956 as of last year, opted to be excused this school year from the required shots, said Assistant Superintendent Ronda Bass, adding that two were for medical reasons and one was for religious.
“That’s a very small portion of our student body,” Bass said.
For some parents, however, the answer to the immunization debate is gray.
Kathy Rand, who has a son diagnosed with Aspergers and another with an Autism spectrum disorder, said it’s difficult to inject a particular assurance toward immunization, noting pros and cons, so she takes it shot-by-shot.
“If there was to be an outbreak, then it’s not just theoretical anymore. It’s, then are you better off having a child get the disease than having the vaccine?” she said.
Rand said her sons received the vaccination for tetanus, but before giving them their booster shots, the doctor measured their titer — the concentration of an antibody against the antigen. Both produced more than the typical response in the number of antibodies to the antigen, so the booster wasn’t given.
Rand said she filled out the paperwork to have her sons exempt at Norman Public Schools, citing a medical reason and included the lab report.
“If you vaccinate someone and they already make lots of antibodies to that antigen, then they’re already immune,” said Rand, the past president of a Norman support group for Autism. “I think it’s something people have to think about.”
