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Board of Education considers making vaccination records mandatory

Immunization not required, but records will help district track numbers

The Langley Board of Education is considering requiring parents to provide immunization records of each student attending public school.

The new policy came as a notice of motion to the board at Tuesday evening’s meeting.

This policy does not require parents to vaccinate their children,Trustee Megan Dykeman stressed.

“Having students vaccination records will give the district the ability to track how many kids are vaccinated, because right now we have no idea,” said Dykeman, who was speaking from the board’s policy committee.

“And God forbid there is an outbreak of a communicable disease, we currently don’t know who is vulnerable in the school population.”

The board will vote on whether to require vaccination records at the March meeting. If it is adopted, it will take effect immediately, requiring all new students entering Langley public school system to provide vaccination records, Langley School District secretary-treasurer David Green said in a later interview.

The policy has been discussed since 2015 by the board of education because of concerns about the potential spread of communicable diseases such as measles, mumps and whooping cough to unvaccinated children in schools. The information gathered would give schools the ability to act in the event of an outbreak.

Vaccination records will only be accessible through the school board office in the event an outbreak, the policy indicates.

While almost all daycare centres in Langley require proof of vaccinations in order to attend, the school district has not gone that route.

Green said he doesn’t know what other school districts are doing.



Monique Tamminga

About the Author: Monique Tamminga

Monique brings 20 years of award-winning journalism experience to the role of editor at the Penticton Western News. Of those years, 17 were spent working as a senior reporter and acting editor with the Langley Advance Times.
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