MA State Inspection of Preschool based on vax's?

[monocyte]

Unsure what to think of this.

We are riding on a medical exemption for our vax status, my son does have a ton of medical problems, so our pedi wrote us a letter stating "that he is a 3 y/o with developmental delays and numerous food allergies" as the reasons why we are behind -- it also states what he is missing and that we will be catching him up ASAP...and in the event of a measles/mumps outbreak, he should be excluded (per state regs)...feel free to call her with questions or concerns. We are pretty behind, and we really take things slow, but I/we had a legit reason for his delayed/missing vaxes.

I warned the director of this before we enrolled him to make sure she was comfortable with this, and she said a note from the pedi was fine and that would be considered a "medical exemption"...(I totally played stupid and let her take the lead in how to best handle this --- but knew it had to be fine, I already had the letter).

So, she pulls me aside today saying that bc she reported his vax status to the state, they red flagged her and are now doing an inspection of the preschool. She's in a total panic over his vaxes and is now saying that this letter isn't enough since "the whole autism vax connection isnt true"....but, that's not why we were doing it. Tho he's spectrumish, he's got more medical issues and was sick for about 2.5 years until his adenoids were removed. He does have a ton of food sensitivities, egg being a big one, but never blood tested pos for it. We see a GI for this (amongst other things), who was fine with our delaying vax til we get his gut under control. We've also got a cardiologist, a ENT, a geneticist, a neuromuscular doc and a neuropsych...he's in OT/PT several days a week -- and in the public school system for walk in services -- his preschool is private.

I'm unsure what to do -- I'm going to call our pedi, but honestly, I dont want to provide the state with more than what they've got already. We did have a recent checkup and did give him the dtap, so its not like we arent slowly giving him what we see to be important -- I also provided an updated vax form right after this appointment so they could see that we are going forward.

Thoughts?

[elsie123]

It really shouldn't matter.  If you have a dr's letter saying he is exempt, or on a catch-up/delayed vax schedule, that is all the school is required to show.  I work at a preschool, and my son is at a different one, and ds has a similar situation in his vax record.  It's never been an issue at his school or mine.  The law in mass is that you simply have to write a letter stating that you are following the exemption guidelines (cite the statute in the letter).

I think your director is panicking for no reason.

[grumpyshoegirl]

I don't think either you or the school have anything to worry about.  You've got a letter from a licensed MD with a medical exemption-- that generally is considered the strongest form of exemption out there, and the only one acceptable in all 50 states.

I'm not a school nurse, but I believe the school's responsibility is to make sure they have either confirmation of vax status OR an exemption on file for every student-- basically, every student needs to be accounted for in some way.  The law in Massachusetts allows for exemption based on medical reasons (yours) or because vaccination conflicts with "sincerely held religious beliefs."  (FWIW, they allow the same exemption when it comes to documenting health insurance coverage-- the law mandating that everyone buy insurance doesn't apply to people whose religions forbid medical care.)