Dear FMSL Community,
We have spent the past several months gathering information on how adjustments to our policy would impact our school community from both practical and legal perspectives. The details of our new policy are outlined here and the new policy will be written and added to our Parent and Staff Handbooks for implementation with 2020-2021 Enrollment.
Our new policy will require current immunization records to be in each student’s file before they begin school. The policy will require that all students in the Toddler program and those in their first and second year of Early Childhood be fully immunized unless their parents have obtained a medical exemption. The policy will accept medical, personal and religious exemptions for elementary aged students, including kindergarten through sixth grade. We have adopted a commitment to herd immunity wherein the total number of our student body will be considered when accepting exemptions of any nature. Lastly, when a child with a personal, religious or medical exemption is enrolled in a classroom we will disclose such to parents of students in the same class without releasing identifying information about the student or their family.
A major consideration in this new policy takes into account our most vulnerable student population; the safety of our youngest students. Another important facet in determining our new policy was our grant with Utah Online Schools. UOS informed us, initially and on several occasions, that we were obliged to follow Utah’s immunization requirements for elementary aged students. This grant supplies our school with Chrome books and Rosetta Stone elementary student accounts. This is a resource we had planned to continue for as long as it is available to us. Update: We have since been informed that we are not required to follow the state’s policy to be eligible for this grant. Further research is being done to learn more about grants we hope to be eligible for in the future.
Adjustments will be made to our admissions procedure to ensure families making enquiries for enrollment will be notified of this policy before they apply for attendance. Please note that this policy will apply to all future applicants and those with current personal exemptions will not be affected by this policy.
In addition, we thank those who have volunteered to support one of our parent committees. We will be contacting people from those committee in January with more information about how we intend to move forward.
We thank all who have been involved and have given time and resources to this process. We are grateful for your engagement and support.
If you have questions or queries regarding our policy change, we are happy to meet with you in person. Please contact britneypeterson@mcsslc.com or brandiallen@mcsslc.com.
