Woodland Hills LAUSD Schools Remain Measles-Free

Despite reports of measles cases elsewhere in Los Angeles County, there still have not been any cases of the disease on any Los Angeles Unified School District campuses, an official said today.

“We do have school nurses who are monitoring students who have exemptions (from being immunized),” the district’s Ellen Morgan told City News Service.

Subscribe to News Alerts and a Daily Email Newsletter for Woodland Hills Patch

“We don’t have any confirmed measles cases in LAUSD,” she said. “All students, except those with exemptions, in LAUSD have immunizations. We don’t exclude unvaccinated students from school unless we’re directed by the health department.”

And so far there has been no such direction, Morgan said.

“We’re doing pretty well.”

She said that while school officials provide parents of unvaccinated students extensive information about resources for having their children immunized against measles and other diseases, “policy says that we certainly honor personal beliefs and any other exemptions that parents have listed at the school.”

The debate about vaccination requirements has garnered increased national attention. Questions are being raised in Congress following the measles outbreak that appeared to have started at Disneyland and spread to other states.

But Morgan said that while school nurses are usually informed of the identities of unvaccinated students, those students are not treated differently on district campuses. Also, the information is kept confidential by law.

“It’s a personal right” for parents to make immunization decisions, she said. “We do want to be sensitive to parents.”

At the same time, efforts are made to provide parents of non-immunized students with vaccination availability information.

“We always recommend contacting their providers with questions about immunization and provide information about local immunization resources,” she said.

Morgan said she doesn’t know if individual district schools have received calls from parents with vaccinated children with concerns about those students being in proximity to non-vaccinated kids. While she hasn’t contacted individual schools about such possible contact, “I haven’t heard of anything like that.”

As for how the district would handle a student who may have measles, she said the schools don’t make their own policies in this area.

“That’s always a misnomer with the public that we could just make our own policies, but we do follow the L.A. County public health acute communicable disease unit,” she said. “So if they notified us of a confirmed case in the community, that has been in contact with students, say for example a visiting relative, and recommends the student be out of school for 21 days, we would take the guidance.”

• City News Service