TUSD report: October 18, 2015

Dear supporters and correspondents,

I have a backlog of topics to cover in letters, and a folder of half-written drafts of those letters. I will try toget them out, one topic at a time. Pressing topics include:

TUSD’s budget deficitSchool climate and safety and related policiesPayroll and other IT problemsHiring and teacher compensation and vacancy problems (specific to TUSD, not the statewide issue)Developments in the desegregation caseMiddle school enrollment problem

Proposal to post schools’ immunization rates

This letter concerns an item on this Tuesday’s TUSD board agenda: my proposal, with the support of localpediatricians, to post on TUSD’s website the immunization rates at TUSD elementary schools. The districtalready reports these data to the state, as required by law, and it would be easy to post summary statistics inan easy-to-understand format. The rising incidence of measles and pertussis, which is partly due to fallingimmunization rates nationally, make this important information for some families.

The proposal would not affect the process for getting a “personal belief” exemption from immunization, aright protected by Arizona law, nor would it disclose individual students’ immunization status. (Severalfederal laws prohibit such disclosure.) It would simply make it easier for families to learn which schools maybe less susceptible to disease outbreaks. This information is unlikely to hurt TUSD’s enrollment, because itsschools have generally high rates of immunization.

Dr. Eve Shapiro, a prominent local pediatrician and public health advocate, and I make the case for suchdisclosure in an opinion column in this week’s Tucson Weekly. I attached the column to the email. This lettermostly does not repeat the column but adds detail to some points.

The last page of the letter provides school-by-school kindergarten immunization rates for TUSD, illustratingthe kind of information that I hope to see posted. I have also included district-by-district comparisons ofoverall kindergarten immunization rates.

The proposed language (amending TUSD Policy JHCC).

“The district shall post on its website a list of all elementary and K-8 schools and the fractionof kindergarten and (if applicable) 6th-grade students enrolled at the school who have,according to that school’s documentation, all state-mandated immunizations. This list shallbe updated by December 1 of each year.”

The proposal refers specifically to kindergarten and sixth grade because those are the data already collectedand reported to the state during each Fall semester.

The proposal returns to the board this Tuesday.

The proposal returns to the board on October 20, but I am not sure about its chances for adoption. In theStar’s article about the proposal, on September 11, Dr. Sanchez and Kristel Foster made skeptical commentsabout it, which we address in the oped. I have not however heard anyone state specifically that they wouldoppose this policy change.

The state’s immunization spreadsheets.

After pediatricians spoke in support of the proposal at the board’s September 9 meeting, TUSD posted on itshome page a temporary link to a state website that gives access to large and complicated spreadsheetscontaining detailed data about individual schools’ immunization and exemption rates. The spreadsheets donot, however, calculate schools’ overall immunization rates, and they appear to contain errors. For example,the data for some schools, including some TUSD schools, seem to imply that more kindergarten students havereceived the complete immunization panel than are immunized for measles alone, which is impossible.Perhaps I am misreading the spreadsheets, but if someone with a Ph.D. from M.I.T. cannot understand themafter an hour of effort, then it makes sense to provide the information in a way that will be more transparentto most parents.

Apparent compliance problem.

Arizona law requires that every student who attends a public school be either fully immunized or have amedical or personal exemption. One interesting implication of the state spreadsheets (if they are correct), isthat 22 TUSD schools are out of compliance with this law, based on kindergarten records alone. Afterbackward-engineering the data, it appears that each of these schools has between one and five students whoare neither immunized nor exempted. Over the past year the Arizona Republic has reported extensively onthis statewide compliance problem, which extends far beyond TUSD.

It will be interesting to see whether this year’s compliance data are better, after the Republic’s reporting onthat issue.

TUSD’s kindergarten data are on the last page of this letter.

At the end of this letter, I have calculated, according to my best understanding of the state spreadsheets, thepercentage of kindergarten students who were fully immunized at each TUSD elementary school, at the startof the 2014-15 school year. (The data for the year 2015-16 are not yet reported.) I have also calculated theoverall kindergarten immunization rate for TUSD and each its major adjoining districts. TUSD’s overall rateof 97.1% is slightly higher than that of most of the other districts, but they all fall within a 4% range. Thelargest differences arise between individual schools, not between the district averages.

The district averages are consistent with what appears in national data: lower-income and immigrantpopulations tend to have higher immunization rates. Locally, this is true partly because Mexico, like manycountries, has stricter immunization policies than Arizona and allows almost no exemptions. Consequentlychildren who come from Mexico (regardless of immigration status) are almost always immunized.

Thank you for your interest in TUSD. I hope to send similar (relatively short) letters on other topics, over thenext few weeks. I also hope to send very overdue responses to some of your emails!

- Mark

Overall kindergarten immunization rates, by TUSD school, for school year 2014-15

(There is no magic number, but 95% is widely considered sufficient to protect non-immunized children.)

School % Fully Immunized School % Fully Immunized

Banks 96% Maldonado 100%

Blenman 96% Manzo 93%

Bloom 98% Marshall 100%

Bonillas 100% Maxwell 98%

Booth Fickett 99% McCorkle 98%

Borman 99% Miles 88%

Borton 96% Miller 98%

Carrillo 100% Mission View 100%

Cavett 94% Myers/Ganoung 96%

Collier 96% Ochoa 100%

Cragin 95% Oyama 90%

Davidson 100% Pueblo Gardens 100%

Davis 100% Roberts-Naylor 94%

Dietz 95% Robins 100%

Drachman 95% Robison 96%

Dunham 97% Rose 98%

Erickson 96% Roskruge 100%

Ford 96% Safford 100%

Fruchthendler 96% Sewell 98%

Gale 97% Soleng Tom 95%

Grijalva 99% Steele 93%

Henry 100% Tolson 94%

Holladay 100% Tully 95%

Hollinger 100% Van Buskirk 94%

Howell 100% Vesey 100%

Hudlow 93% Warren 100%

Hughes 98% Wheeler 97%

Johnson 97% White 100%

Kellond 95% Whitmore 95%

Lineweaver 98% Wright 94%

Lynn Urquides 96% TOTAL 97.1%

Overall kindergarten immunization rates, by district, for the school year 2014-15

Sunnyside 98.2% Amphitheater 96.6% Note: all calculations are based onFlowing Wells 98.1% Cat. Foothills 95.7% the spreadsheets posted by the Arizona TUSD 97.1% Marana 95.4% Dept. of Health Services, which mayVail 96.9% Tanque Verde 94.6% contain errors. The accuracy of these Sahuarita 96.8% percentages is not guaranteed.