Home Visits Deliver Vaccination Message
County Wants Students Back in Class

By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 2, 2007

"Are you Kevin Colon?" the visitors asked the teenage boy standing at the door.

They spoke almost simultaneously, in English and Spanish. It was 2 in the afternoon, and the boy in baggy jeans and a navy blue Aeropostale T-shirt was waking up from a nap.

Yes, he said, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. And was his mother home? the visitors asked. Yes.

Dory Figueroa, a small, slim woman with red-brown hair tied in a bun, came to the door and invited the strangers into her two-story home on the northwestern edge of Prince George's County.

"The reason we are here today is Kevin was withdrawn from school for not having his immunizations," said Arnold Kaplan, an itinerant pupil personnel worker for the county school system.

Sandra Acevedo relayed the message in Spanish: Maryland has new vaccination requirements for students in grades 6 through 9. Kevin, 16 and a freshman, didn't get the shots, so he was pulled out of school. Acevedo and Kaplan were here to bring him back.

At least 6,000 students in the Maryland suburbs failed to comply with the vaccination requirement when it went into effect in January. Three months later, 808 students still haven't gotten one or more of the shots. Kevin is one of five students at High Point High School who did not have proof of vaccination; none has been in class since the beginning of the year.

This visit to Kevin's house was a last resort. School officials started sending letters to parents about the vaccinations during the summer. The letters were joined by public-service ads on television and the radio giving directions on scheduling appointments at free clinics. Then there were phone calls in English and Spanish.

Kaplan said many of the students in his area without immunizations were Hispanic, and he thought language barriers or immigration status could have played a part in delaying vaccinations.

The campaign to get vaccinations was moderately successful. But there were still a few hundred parents and students the school system could not reach. A few hundred more students were vaccinated and readmitted to school, only to miss getting a required booster shot. Now they are once again out of school.

That left the door-to-door visits, which started last week. They are not an easy solution.

Some of the missing students are chronically truant and unlikely to attend classes with or without the immunizations, school officials said.

There are 30 regional pupil personnel workers and 20 school-based workers assigned to track down the students. Telephone numbers and addresses in school records are often wrong or out of date.

Out of the five homes Kaplan and Acevedo visited one day last week, no one answered at four. They went like the visit to an apartment in the 1900 block of Fox Street in Adelphi.

"I stand to the side of the door," Kaplan said before he knocked. "A predecessor said, 'Don't stand in front of the door, because you never know what's coming out at you.' "

He knocked. No response. He put his ear up to the door, listening. A television was on, but the sound might have been coming from a neighboring apartment.

"I hear something," he said and knocked again. Again, nothing.

"Many times, they're afraid to open the door," he said. Then he slid his business card under the door with a note asking the family to call him. Kaplan and Acevedo left.

That was his second stop. A carpenter was at work at the first home he visited but said the family wasn't around. At his fourth stop, Kaplan learned that the family had moved three months ago. At the fifth, no one answered the door.

The lack of success did not discourage Kaplan, a 35-year veteran of the school system.

"Look, we need these kids back. That's the bottom line," he said.

He explained what kept him going: "Occasionally, whether you're a classroom teacher, a principal, you know when you've connected. You know when it's appreciated, and that's a good feeling."

He got a good feeling from Kevin's mother. She said she wanted her son to go back to school.

"Can you show her what kind of vaccinations he needs?" Acevedo asked Kaplan.

"One hepatitis B," Kaplan said, passing her a leaflet in Spanish. "And he needs two varicella, which is chickenpox. We're trying to get consent from the parent to have him go back to school on April 5 and get his immunizations."

Acevedo interpreted the message. "The mother wants him to finish school, but Kevin does not want to go back to school, and he sees this as an excuse," Acevedo told Kaplan.

Kevin, a freshman, listened impassively on the couch. His mother, originally from Puerto Rico, explained that he sometimes did construction work with his father but that most of the time he sat around the house doing nothing. Kevin didn't dispute that.

"We want Kevin back in school," Kaplan said to Acevedo. "I'd like to have Mom sign a consent form to allow Kevin to have transport and be immunized by the Health Department." He passed the mother a release form allowing the school system to pick him up and take him to a clinic.

"She said she thinks that he already has those vaccinations," Acevedo said.

"There's no indication of that," Kaplan said. "I looked at it with the school nurse this morning. In the meantime, we should have this just in case."

"When I got the shots, I wasn't going to school at the time," Kevin said, speaking in English.

"We want you to come back to school on April 5," Kaplan said to Kevin, then turned back to his mother: "Once he has the shots, he will be readmitted to school the same day, and he won't be sitting here all day."

"Kevin, is there anything preventing you from going back to school?" Kaplan asked. "Any bad blood?"

"No."

"How were your grades before you left school?"

"They weren't too good; they weren't too bad. I started messing up at the end, getting bad grades."

Acevedo, who was still talking with Kevin's mother, broke in: "She said, 'He can do it; he just doesn't try hard enough.' "

"We're going to be here if you don't come back," Acevedo told Kevin.

"We don't have disposable students," Kaplan said.

Kevin's mother smiled as Kaplan stood up to leave.

"Now we've got to try to kick butt and try to get some other kid back in school," he said.