http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/california-today-vaccinations-schoolchildren.html 2016-09-07 15:13:27 California Today: Vaccinate Schoolchildren or Keep Them Home Welcome to California Today, a morning update on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state). === Good morning. Welcome to California Today, a Tell us about the Want to receive California Today by email? With the new school year underway, California is cracking down on parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. Since a new law took effect in July, no longer will a child be able to attend class unimmunized on the basis of a parent’s objections. In the past, parents could sidestep vaccine mandates by declaring that the injections were contrary to their religious or personal beliefs. This occurred despite overwhelming evidence from doctors and public health officials that they are safe and effective in preventing infectious diseases. Tens of thousands of vaccine-refusing parents across California now face three options: yield, tutor your children at home or pack up and leave the state. But if there is to be any exodus from California schools, expect it to unfold slowly. The law, known as In 2015, parents of incoming kindergartners in California filed more than 13,000 personal belief exemptions. It’s unclear how the latest crop of vaccine-wary kindergarten parents are responding to the law. Schools took steps to ensure that parents understood the rules and even helped coordinate vaccine clinics, said Robert Oakes, a spokesman for the California Department of Education. “It’s the right thing to do for public health, and it’s the law in California,” he said. Still, opponents say a trickle of defectors have been streaming out of California since the middle of last year, when the bill was Stefanie Duncan Fetzer, an opponent in San Clemente, said she personally knew of roughly 200 families who have fled. Many went to Oregon, Colorado or Texas, she said, states seen as unlikely to impose strict vaccine rules. Other parents are in a sort of limbo, unable to make other arrangements for their children. Ms. Fetzer described one family that sold their house, bought a camper and “just took off.” “They don’t know where they are going to land,” she said. “They are just going to drive around the country and home-school their kids and hope to find a place to go.” • Brock Turner, the former Stanford University student who spent three months in jail after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, registered as a sex offender in his home state of Ohio. The designation will stick for life. [ • The disappearance 20 years ago of Kristin Smart, a freshman at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, is one of the Central Coast’s highest-profile cold cases. Now, officials are saying they have developed a lead, and are planning to excavate a site near the campus. [ • One of the nation’s largest • On Wednesday, the California Coastal Commission is expected to vote on a giant development proposed for the last big coastal lot in Orange County. The project has stirred fierce opposition. [ • A federal judge blocked a plan by the Bureau of Land Management to open more than a million acres in Central California to oil drilling. [ • In Sacramento, Asian-Americans gathered 2,000 signatures on a letter to the mayor demanding something be done about a rash of robberies targeting their community. [ • Six ways that legal marijuana would change California, and seven ways that it wouldn’t. [ • Seventeen voter initiatives? That’s nothing. On top of those statewide proposals, San Diegans will face 12 city and two county measures in November — 31 in all. Here’s help. [ • No one else grows strawberries like Driscoll’s, the berry juggernaut in Watsonville. Now the company is hoping to make berry lovers care about that distinction. [ • A study of the Berkeley soda tax found that low-income residents cut sugary drink consumption by a fifth. [ • Finally, watch this painfully accurate depiction of what it’s like to talk to someone just back from Burning Man. “It was everything. It was literally everything.” (Warning: Salty language) [ A bunch of readers sent emails Tuesday urging California Today to reflect the entire mosaic of the state. A few highlights: I want to remind you to venture away from the coast to look at the Central Valley and small-town California, too. That’s where some of the most pressing social, economic and environmental issues are playing out. — Diane Cary, 64, Winters My view of California is one of many “Californias,” each of them having their own beauty, their own struggles, their own politics. — Mauro Sifuentes, 31, San Francisco Please do not treat San Diego as a suburb of L.A. We are so much more than a border town. I would love to see California being more than San Francisco and L.A. — Susan Elliott, 66, Encinitas Our tech reporters will be calling the play-by-play during Rumormongers say it will be thinner, faster and — gasp! — The event starts at 10 a.m. Pacific. Find live coverage and analysis on It was like a moment from a Disney movie. Mike Karas, a tourist from Honolulu, had his camera pointed toward an exquisite view of Yosemite when a bride and her groom stepped onto a rocky ledge high above a valley. She turned to him as the sun burst into an apricot hue on the horizon. “It was like wow, that’s amazing,” Mr. Karas, 31, said. He snapped a photo. But the mystery couple vanished down a trail before he could flag them down. Later, he It also fueled an effort to identify the couple that stretched for days. Then, late Tuesday, the mystery was solved. The bride was Mr. Karas said he spoke to Ms. Mack by phone after she spotted the photo on social media and connected with him. “She was laughing and happy about the photo and the whole story and loved it,” he said. “She didn’t know how big exactly the story had become.” Ms. Mack said in an email that the couple were married in the national park right before the photo was taken. California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U.C. Berkeley.