Senate committee accepts childcare-office restructuring but rejects restoring stricter religious vaccine exemption language for daycares

A Senate committee reviewed a conference committee substitute for House Bill No. 2294 and agreed to several organizational changes for the Kansas Office of Early Childhood but declined an amendment that would have restored denomination-based religious exemptions to childcare immunization requirements.

The committee inserted the language from the conference document identified as "02/1994," accepted a conceptual amendment that redesignates certain child-care advocacy functions under the deputy director for licensing and finance and creates an ombudsman role, and declined a separate amendment that would have replaced the bill’s substituted "sincerely held religious belief" language with the existing statutory wording requiring a written statement that a parent is an adherent of a denomination opposed to immunizations.

The accepted amendment would add the Office of Early Childhood to the State Treasury language for the Children’s Initiative Accountability Fund, require the office to include use of those funds…