MIAMI-DADE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS RELEASES
STRONG IMMUNIZATION FIGURES
 

Superintendent of Schools Alberto M. Carvalho announced today that following an extensive records review, Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) can confidently claim an immunization compliance rate of 94.4 percent for seventh grade students and 91.6 percent for kindergarten students, as of February 1, 2012.
 
“An exhaustive review of nearly 40,000 student records has helped confirm that Miami-Dade’s students are on par with students in other areas of Florida,” Carvalho said. “This should help put parents’ minds at ease, knowing that their children are studying in a healthy learning environment.”
 
The school district, in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Health Department and The Children’s Trust, worked to analyze and address a number of issues that gave the appearance that the school district was 23 percent out of compliance, as cited in a series of articles that appeared last year in The Miami Herald.
 
The articles indicated that Broward and Palm Beach counties were more than 90 percent in compliance with immunization requirements and that students in M-DCPS were at greater risk due to a reported compliance rate of 76 percent.
 
Nearly 40,000 student records were reviewed to address individual issues by an Immunization Task Force formed by the Miami-Dade Health Department and The Children’s Trust, working with M-DCPS.
 
A team of 15 full-time school district personnel and approximately 20 external nurses and staff, met daily at a district facility for more than five months to determine the origins of this reported low-compliance rate and to correct issues that arose in order to ultimately increase compliance.
 
The cause of the discrepancy reported by The Miami Herald is believed to be data that was incorrectly coded by students’ private health care providers. The largest category of incorrect data was temporary medical exemptions issued by external providers that listed an expiration date far into the future, which put the students’ records out of compliance, bringing the district’s overall rate down.
 
M-DCPS administrators and the Health Department are working together to make procedural adjustments that will ensure the District receives correct information from external healthcare providers in the future and a continued high compliance rate.
 

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