A second school in New York, Chippewa Elementary, has sent out a letter to parents threatening the use of Child Protective Services if they refuse to vaccinate their children according to the new mandatory vaccination law. In a letter written by school nurse Patricia Anunziato and signed by principal Patricia Aubrey, it says, “If after 14 calendar days from the effective date of the exclusion notice, parents or guardians have not contacted the school to report the compliance action they have taken, the family may be referred to the Suffolk County Child Protective Services.”
PJ Media reached out to the school and was directed to their public relations firm, Syntax. A representative, Mike Ganci, responded with an updated letter that contained an explanation for the CPS threat, but did not take it back.
“Unfortunately, the language used in some of the prior letters sent from individual schools was inconsistent and could have been perceived as alarming in regard to the process we would follow with families looking to obtain the proper records. It is not our intent to follow a process where our schools would contact Suffolk County Child Protective Services without exhausting all options beforehand. Please know this was not meant as a scare tactic for our families.”
When pressed for clarification on what would trigger a call to child welfare, Superintendent Kenneth Graham responded from his PR firm, “The school district is obligated under New York State Law to report potential forms of educational neglect. Any situation that results in a student not attending school regularly could be considered a form of educational neglect.”
The new law says that any child attending school, public or private, must be vaccinated according to the schedule and no exemptions except medical will be accepted. However, parents who choose to homeschool are still free to vaccinate on their own schedule or not at all. While the updated letter from Sachem School District links to FAQs that contain that information, neither letter informs parents of their right to homeschool.
It’s an interesting word choice for the superintendent to say the CPS threat wasn’t a “scare tactic,” because the mention of child welfare services to any parent instantly causes dread and fear. Children are often taken by CPS without a warrant, without due process, with rubber-stamped court documents, through fraudulent means like faked drug tests, and never seen by the parents again. There is plenty of reason to fear CPS. Children in foster care are reportedly six times more likely to be sexually abused.
The U.S. State Department put out a report titled “2019 Trafficking in Persons Report” that revealed, “In the United States, traffickers prey upon children in the foster care system. Recent reports have consistently indicated that a large number of victims of child sex trafficking were at one time in the foster care system.”
Geoff Rogers, co-founder of the United States Institute Against Human Trafficking (USIAHT), told Fox News, “These are American kids, American-born, 50 percent to 60 percent of them coming out of the foster care industry.”
When a school threatens a parent with CPS, they are threatening the likely destruction of a child’s life and advocating for an industry that is contributing to the demand for sex traffickers throughout the world. Considering that it isn’t a criminal matter for parents to choose not to vaccinate their children (yet), should schools be allowed to wield the threat of family separation over it?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member