Texas Children Hurricane Victims Have Legal School Enrollment and Vaccination Exemption Rights

Many parts of Texas have suffered severe flooding and damage where families have had their lives drastically affected. This is just the start of a challenging journey ahead recovering from Hurricane Harvey. If your family has been displaced and/or your property damaged and need to find new health care practitioners that will take care of your family and respect your vaccine refusal or delay decisions, we can check in with our community to find you the referrals you need where you need them. If you are reading this and have a great referral for a health care provider that is supportive of your rights to decline or delay vaccines, please let us know their names, contact information, and location so we can pass that information on to families in need. You can reach Dawn in Austin and Rebecca in Houston by emailing TXDirector@nvicadvocacy.org. If you have become temporarily homeless or your school has become damaged and your child needs to re-enroll somewhere else, please know you have rights. “Students who are experiencing homelessness are to be enrolled immediately. Districts cannot require students experiencing homelessness to provide proof of residency, immunizations, birth certificates guardianship documents, or any other sort of required paperwork before enrolling. Requiring missing paperwork or any other delay to enrollment is a violation of the McKinney-Vento Act.”