Immunizations in Baltimore City Schools -- EXEMPTIONS POSSIBLE????

[La Sombra]

Hi all! My family and I are moving this week to Baltimore from our home in Ann Arbor, MI. My daughter is going to be starting kindergarten at our local public school. One of the things that we are required to bring in order to register her is her immunization records.

Initially, when my daughter was born, I decided not to vaccinate her. I later decided that she should have some vaccinations--but we chose not to give her the MMR vax or the varicella vax. So now she's in need of another round of vax (DtAP and polio) but I'm reading now that Baltimore City Schools also require all students to have the MMR and varicella vaccines. Furthermore, if she hasn't been fully vaccinated by September 14th, she can be suspended from school!

This is a problem because she's just going in on Thursday for her third of four rounds of vaccines--and we hadn't planned on giving her the MMR or varicella, but even if we do now, she'll still have several more rounds to go through! It's also a lot of vaccines to administer at once. My point is that there is no way she'll be able to be caught up by September 14th even if we decided to give her all the vaccines at once starting on Thursday.

So I'm wondering if Maryland has any kind of exemption law such as we have here in Michigan. If anyone with information or experience with how this works can share that with me, I would be deeply grateful!

TIA!!!

Diane

[Bmorefarmgirl]

Maryland has a religious exemption for vaccines and physical exams. Not sure where to find the exact document, but try searching this forum or google. I know it's come up here before.

[IdentityCrisisMama]

By the time we moved to MD my DC was all the way caught up on vaccines so I can't say for sure BUT I when she started school in CA she was behind. I had a really hard time with the philosophical exemption because we were just delayed/selective (at the time) and they didn't seem to think the exemption applied to our situation. 

So....

What I would do if I were you is just apply for a religious exemption for vaccines. I wouldn't mess with the delay/selective stuff.  Good luck and welcome to MD! 

[KatyLinda]

When my DD started K (2 yrs ago) the bottom of the health form had a space to sign for a religious vax waiver. 

[lillymonster]

State of MD has a standard form for all the schools. You just sign at the bottom for religious exemption. I just did that, my daughter has not finished a bunch of series and now she is old enough that she is fearful of shots, so it will be a while before we get them all. School has said nothing to me so far. You can find the form somewhere on the depart of health page OR there might be a link if your school has a webpage.