Deadline looms for students' shots.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

Unless they want their charges to take an unplanned vacation from school next month, parents need to make sure their children's immunizations are up to date, public health officials say.

Letters will go out Feb. 2 to parents and guardians of children whose immunization records are not up to date, warning they need to get their children immunized by Feb. 16 - aka Exclusion Day - or their children will be kept out of school until they get their shots.

Last year, public health officials sent out 2,897 letters and kept 582 students out of school. It marked the first time in five years the numbers declined from the previous year.

From 2000 to 2003, the number of excluded students rose from 257 to 667. The number of warning letters during that same period increased from 1,424 to 3,249.

It's too soon to say whether last year's 14 percent decrease in the number of kids sent home represents a trend, said Martha deBroekert, immunization coordinator with Lane County Public Health.

"We hope it's a trend," she said. "It would be nice to say more kids are complying and getting immunized before the deadline. There's no way to say at this point."

State law requires children to be vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps and rubella. Children in kindergarten through 11th grade are required to have the hepatitis B series and a second dose of measles vaccine. Chicken pox shots are required for students in kindergarten through fourth grade and seventh grade to 11th grade. Parents have another option: They can seek a religious exemption under state law if they hold beliefs, practices or ethical values at odds with immunization.

In Lane County, the religious exemption rate among preschoolers was 6.3 percent last year, up from 5 percent in 2000-01. Ashland had the highest exemption rate among school-age children, at 12.4 percent; among preschoolers, it was 18.8 percent.