Philadelphia School District’s Back to School Shots Drive. Are They Truly Supporting Student Health?

The Philadelphia School District has just put out their PR for their next Ring the Bell Bus Tour, its annual summer welcome back to school events. As has been this tour’s pattern, first on the agenda is a strong push to make parents believe that vaccines are a required ritual to allow their children to attend school. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The only requirement is that parents submit a statement that, for religious, personal, philosophical, strong moral reasons or medical reasons their child will not be receiving some or all vaccinations.

Current science shows that children who do not receive vaccinations or only partially receive what is recommended by the CDC are heads and shoulders healthier than their vaccinated peers.

The school district has shown that it will ignore or hide Pennsylvania law regarding vaccines for K–12 students. PA law has very robust exemptions for childhood vaccination, which in practice makes these shots completely voluntary and cannot be forcefully mandated like in neighboring New York.  This past January, the Philadelphia School District took advantage of a small measles outbreak, details of which the city’s health agency has kept tightly under wraps, to produce a robocall and email blast to parents whose children did not have a MMR vaccine, threatening to bar their child from school for two weeks unless they produced proof of vaccination. There was never a case of measles reported among any members of the school district community.

Many parents panicked and contacted the school district. Right to Know requests returned to the CHD PA show. CHD PA immediately contacted the Chief Medical Officer for the District, Dr. Kendra McDow, to request that she correct the misinformation immediately. A second request was made by CHD PA after several days had passed without a correction. A day later, a follow-up email was sent to parents linking to an updated school district webpage that listed the availability of exemptions and how to file them.

Please share this information concerning the simple procedure for filling out a vaccine exemption for any public K–12 school in PA. Break the wall of silence in your school district by letting parents know how to be active stewards for their child’s health.