Latest news with #SB460
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nevada Democrats unveil major education bill targeting CCSD, charter schools
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Nevada Democrats pitched their education bill Monday, which would bring major changes to the state. Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D), Clark County – District 6, presented her bill before the Senate Education Committee for its first hearing. The proposal has language that allows local school boards of trustees to block charter schools from opening and gives the state Department of Education the power to remove a superintendent if 30% of schools don't experience 'academic growth.' Cannizzaro's bill takes aim at the Clark County School District. Her proposal would give the four appointed non-voting CCSD trustees voting power. However, her proposed reforms to charter schools have opposition. 'I rise in strong opposition to SB460 because it limits parental rights—the fundamental right of parents to choose the best learning environment for their children—at a time when Nevadans overwhelmingly support school choice,' Jill Douglas wrote in opposition to the bill. Based on enrollment, charter schools are the second-largest school system in Nevada, behind only CCSD. According to Cannizzaro's proposal, all charter school teachers would be required to have a license or an endorsement. As it currently stands, charter schools are only required to have 80% of their teachers with a license or an endorsement. Cannizzaro also seeks to reform the State Public Charter School Authority, which is the agency that oversees charter schools. Her proposal would reduce the agency's members from 11 to nine and change the criteria for appointment. 'I want to stress that I believe charter schools are an important part of our educational system,' Cannizzaro said. 'I do believe that when we talk about accountability, we can actually talk about accountability for all schools that are public schools and publicly funded, and that's why there are provisions in here that addresses some of those changes.' These charter school amendments potentially place her bill in peril as Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo could veto it. 'I've received plenty of emails for and against a bill, and I think there's concerns of the requirements we're putting forward for private and charter schools as to whether or not it's fair,' St. Sen. Fabian Doñate, D-Clark County, said at Monday's hearing. He stated he is a supporter of more accountability for the state's charter schools. Cannizzaro's proposal would also give the governor the authority to declare a state of emergency at a school district if its schools don't improve academically. Lombardo's bill would go in the opposite direction, including transforming nonperforming public schools into charter schools. His bill has its first hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Vaccine exemptions bill waits in the West Virginia House of Delegates
FAIRMONT — Increasing vaccination exemptions beyond medical to personal for public school children could risk the state's leadership in communicable disease prevention, according to one health care expert. 'At the end of the day for children, there's very close interactions and there's a lot of spreading of different germs,' Dr. Lisa Costello, an assistant professor in General Pediatrics at the West Virginia University School of Medicine. 'That's why having immunization policies in place — every state has immunization requirements for school entrance, with the differences based upon the exemptions to these requirements. In West Virginia, we get it right. Other states look to us as leaders in this area because of only allowing medical exemptions.' Senate Bill 460 seeks to add philosophical or religious exemptions to the state's vaccine requirements for children who attend public school. The bill passed out of the West Virginia Senate on Feb. 21 on a vote of 20-12 and was sent to the House of Delegates, where it has resided since Feb. 25. The House Health and Human Resources Committee holds the bill and after a hearing on Feb. 24, the bill is in markup discussion. Bailey Kuykendoll, operations director for the Naples, Fla.-based Stand for Health Freedom, a national nonprofit that advocates for reduced vaccination requirements, submitted a comment in favor of the bill. The comment frames vaccine requirements using the language of personal freedom and religious conviction. 'No student should be forced to choose between their conscience and their future,' Kuykendoll wrote. 'SB460 ensures that individuals retain the right to make personal medical decisions without facing exclusion or discrimination in schools and universities.' However, that framing omits any mention of the consequences to public welfare, or the danger of resurgent diseases long thought eliminated, such as polio or measles. An unvaccinated New Mexico resident died from a suspected case of measles on Thursday, a week after a 6-year-old child died of measles in Texas. New Mexico reported 30 measles case a day. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there's already been over 220 cases of measles just three months in 2025. In 2024, there was a total of 285 for the whole of the year. So, what is measles and why is there a vaccine for it? Measles, which is airborne, can lead to 'ear infections, pneumonia, and encephalitis or inflammation of the brain that can lead to permanent neurologic damage and even death. On average, measles kills between one and three of every 1,000 infected children,' according to Johns Hopkins Medical. The current measles outbreak centers around a county in Texas where vaccinations are low due to a high number of personal belief exemptions allowed under state law. Costello said medical exemptions are important, and some individuals can't receive childhood immunizations for different reasons, such as allergic reactions or difficult treatments like cancer treatment. West Virginia has medical exemptions on the books. 'When you start talking about any other type of exemption, it's really for me, nonmedical exemption, and it can be really hard to delineate what that means,' Costello said. She added that strong policies like the kind West Virginia has, has afforded the state protections which have prevented outbreaks of preventable diseases like those that have happened in other parts of the country, including neighboring states. Moreover, Cathy Stemp, former State Health Officer and Commissioner, pointed out in a letter to the committee, that West Virginia Parochial schools note the bill is not a religious freedom bill, since it mandates action against their religious tenet of honoring health and protecting those in their learning community. Dan Salmon, professor at John Hopkins University's Division of Global Disease Epidemiology and Control, studies optimizing the prevention of childhood infectious diseases through the use of vaccines, with an emphasis on determining the risks of vaccine refusal. He also looks at the factors that impact vaccine acceptance as well as evaluating and improving state laws that give exemptions to school immunization requirements. 'Philosophical exemptions, or personal belief exemptions, are associated with increasing rates of exemptions, higher rates of exemptions and higher rates of disease,' Salmon said. 'When you have states that have fairly narrow exemptions, and how you implement and enforce that — it's pretty complicated, not easy — but when they're stricter, you see less disease. When states have really easy exemptions, you see more disease.' However, there is nuance. While Maryland has religious exemptions that are easier to get than it is to get a child vaccinated, the state still has low exemption rates. Salmon said that largely reflects that most Marylanders want to vaccinate their kids. It could also be because when some parents read the religious exemption, they think it doesn't apply to them because their issue isn't religious. Salmon emphasized the importance of educating parents on the subject of vaccines and their kid's health. Salmon said if SB460 does pass in West Virginia, education will become more important. But there are concerns. 'My concern is there's so much misinformation out there and things have become so polarized we're really going to see drops in immunization coverage,' he said. 'We're going to see a return of measles and we're going to see a lot more pertussis and other diseases and that's what my concern really is.' However, he did have some suggestions for states that expand vaccine exemptions past medical. One is annual renewal in order to encourage the parent to revisit the issue. Views can change over time. It also ensures exemptions are legitimate. Another thing he's seen states do is mandate education before granting exemptions. Costello said what motivates a lot of parents around the issue of vaccination is love and doing what's best for children. Costello is a mother herself, and as a pediatrician, she sees individuals do what they think is best for their child. Unfortunately, she said, there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. 'When it comes to immunizations, this is one of the cases where one individual's choice does impact the community, and that's something that needs ongoing education,' she said. 'I get that this is very complex. There's a lot of complexities in regards to immunology, and, a lot of trying to make it understandable. So that's an ongoing effort. We need to continue to try to educate and have those discussions in ways that make sense.'
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
WV Senate approves bill loosening state's vaccination requirements; bill now moves to the House
Sen. Laura Wake Chapman, R-Ohio, who sponsored Senate Bill 460, loosening the state's strict vaccination laws, holds up a map illustration how many other states allow only medical exemptions to school vaccine requirements. The Senate passed the bill Friday with a vote of 20 to 12. (Will Price | West Virginia Legislative Photography) A bill that would loosen West Virginia's school mandated vaccine laws took a step forward on Friday. The West Virginia Senate passed Senate Bill 460 with a vote of 20 to 12. All 50 states require school children to be vaccinated against a series of infectious diseases like measles and polio. West Virginia has been among five states that has not allowed religious or philosophical exemptions to those requirements. The state has allowed only medical exemptions. If Senate Bill 460 becomes law, families who want a religious exemption to those requirements would submit a written statement to their school or day care administrator saying that the state vaccine requirements cannot be met because they conflict with the parents' or emancipated child's religious or philosophical beliefs. The bill, as it passed the Senate, also loosens the medical exemption procedure, something bill sponsor and Senate Health Committee Chair Laura Wakim Chapman, R-Ohio, argued is unfair. Current law requires the medical provider of the family seeking a medical exemption to provide documentation of the medical need for the exemption to the state immunization officer for approval. The immunization officer position would be eliminated under SB 460, Wakim said. Most of the debate on the floor Friday, which lasted more than an hour, was over religious rights, both of students and schools. Senators voted down an amendment that would have allowed the schools to set their own policies for vaccines, independent of the legislation. Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brook, said the amendment would have corrected a 'grievous error,' in the bill of not allowing schools run by churches to require vaccinations if they're a part of their faith. 'Many states have religious exemptions, and West Virginia is the outlier in that but the absolute majority of those states also allow for a school that is run by a church to determine its own vaccination policy in line with the tenets of its faith,' he said. The Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, with more than 4,600 students in 24 schools statewide, has supported the state's current vaccine laws. Last year, after the Legislature passed House Bill 5105, a bill that would have allowed private and parochial schools to set their own vaccine requirements, the church said it would keep the requirements for its school the same. A spokesman for the diocese said the church is monitoring the bill making its way through the statehouse. 'We have always maintained our constitutional right to order our schools as we see fit in accord with our beliefs,' Tim Bishop, director of marketing and communications for the diocese, said in a statement. Weld, who voted against the legislation, said the bill uses the power of the state to tell a church how it should operate. A line in the bill says that schools and day care centers shall not 'prohibit an individual exercising an exemption pursuant to this section from participating in extracurricular activities or from attending school-based events.' 'I cannot imagine what the reaction would be in this body if we read a news article that the state of California, their legislature passed a law that required all priests, pastors, reverends, ministers, rabbis, to marry every couple that comes through their doors,' Weld said. 'It would be unconstitutional, because the state should not dictate to a church how to operate.' Church-run schools may have the option to become 'micro-schools' to have their own vaccination policies, he said, but that would disqualify them from participating in athletics through the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activity Commission, he said. Sen. Tom Takubo, a Kanawha County Republican and physician, also voted against the bill. Takubo said the state has a lot of problems and ranks last in a lot of health outcomes, among other issues. 'In this instance, in immunizations, where we can protect the most vulnerable of our society — children — against preventable, and I think that's a key thing that everybody needs to remember, these are preventable childhood diseases that we're protecting our children [from], we rank No. 1, No. 1 one in the country,' Takubo said. 'I know there are arguments that they say, 'well, we other states have different exemptions.' Other states also have a lot of outbreaks, and they have a lot of death, a lot of morbidity.' In Texas, a measles outbreak has now spread to 90 people. Of those, only five were confirmed to have been vaccinated. Sixteen of those 90 people have been hospitalized because of the virus, which is highly contagious and can lead to serious complications and death. 'Everything we do, we often compare ourselves to our neighbors and our neighbors' children have all suffered at the hands of preventable childhood disease, but we have a wall protecting West Virginia, protecting the children of West Virginia. I'm very proud of, very proud of,' Takubo said. 'So why? When you're No. 1, do you want to tear that down?' Proponents of the bill have argued that the law as it is now violates families' rights by prohibiting children school entry unless they get a series of vaccinations. 'We, right now in this state, are prohibiting a public and private education to individuals,' said Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson. 'We are prohibiting kids, children from participating in sports and extracurriculars. We are prohibiting them from summer camps. We are prohibiting them from 4-H. we are prohibiting them from FFA, we are prohibiting them from — there's a whole long list.' Reading directly from the bill, she said: 'A number of citizens have religious and moral objections to one or more of the vaccines on the compulsory immunization list contained in this section. Compulsory immunization forces those West Virginians to choose between their religious belief and their children's fundamental right to a public education. Forcing West Virginians to vaccinate their children despite their religious and moral objections substantially burdens the free exercise of religion in violation of the Constitutions of the United States and West Virginia and, further, is against the public health policy of this state.' 'Now, that's not law yet, but that is what we are saying with this legislation,' Rucker said. Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, who also opposed the legislation, said the bill is likely to result in a lawsuit. The Catholic Church and others indicated in its statement it will go to court to protect its religious freedom, he said. 'So, last chance everybody,' Woelfel said. 'That judge in that case needs legislative history. He needs people to get up and tell the world what the compelling state interest is to impose the will of the government on a religious institution. So let's get up and say that, and sadly, you're going to lose the whole bill when this bill is declared unconstitutional. Two or three or four years from now, there will be a stay. In the meantime, [you'll] lose your whole bill.' Chapman said that mothers who have seen their children harmed by vaccines want the legislation. 'They don't want to vaccinate anymore of their children or give them anymore,' she said. 'But guess what? Those children are being denied their education. We've all had those mothers show up at our doors.' She said the bill would stand up to scrutiny. 'The senator from Brooke says it's a grievous error to pass this bill. This is existing language in the law,' she said. 'The governor didn't add private and parochial schools to this bill. I didn't add private and parochial schools to this bill. People in this very body 10 years ago added them to the law, and now they suddenly have a difference of opinion and think private and parochial schools shouldn't follow our public health laws.' 'If that's the case… then our private school laws don't have to follow our fire code, our sanitation laws or our public health laws, just get rid of it,' she said. The Republican-led legislature has tried for years to loosen the state's strict vaccination laws. Last year, after lawmakers passed House Bill 5105, which would have allowed private and parochial schools to have their own vaccination requirements, former Gov. Jim Justice vetoed the legislation. Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order requiring the state to allow religious exemptions to those requirements on his second day in office. The bill will next go to the House of Delegates for consideration. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
