As many Colorado parents, students and school nurses know well, explicit parental permission is required before a school gives a child any medication. So, you would think the administrators at Heritage High School in Littleton would have been more careful when the school recently hosted a COVID vaccine clinic.

Yet, as reported last week by our news affiliate the Washington Examiner, the school wound up getting in over its head. At least a couple of students almost got vaccinated without their parents being present – and without confirming parental approval.

The confusion began when some Heritage parents saw a flyer promoting the clinic; the flyer informed students identification would not be required. They contacted Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Brian Ewert via email to express their concern that kids wouldn’t have to show ID and, thus, wouldn’t have to show proof of parental approval, either. He emailed back, “students under the age of 18 cannot get a vaccination without parent permission and they must have a parent or legal guardian present with them to sign consent.”

Ewert’s response jibed with state law but not – as he evidently didn’t realize – with the way the clinic actually functioned. It operated at the end of the school day, from 3-7 p.m.; was organized by regional health department Tri-County Health, and was run by contractor Jogan Health Solutions. As Ewert later acknowledged in a statement to parents, the district hadn’t known the clinic wouldn’t require minors to be accompanied by a parent or guardian after all, “as long as parental consent is collected and shared prior to the appointment through the vaccine provider’s online scheduling system.”

But the gap between the clinic’s and the school’s policies turned out to be even bigger than that.

Tri-County Health Department spokeswoman Becky O’Guin told the Examiner the agency follows “all state of Colorado protocols for collecting parental consent for minors seeking vaccinations” – but added the county’s clinics couldn’t confirm consent because a state public health order “prohibits vaccine providers from requiring an ID.”

Sure enough, as seen in a video later posted in media reports, two students were approved for shots after neither provided proof of identification. The 15- and 16-year-old minors – who didn’t go through with the shots – had provided false information without the clinic verifying it or asking for parental consent. The videos drew criticism locally and nationally, prompting the district to cancel on-campus clinics.

It’s just as well. The clinic probably never should have opened in the school in the first place. Given the long-standing, strict rules against administering so much as an over-the-counter pain reliever to a student at school without explicit parental consent, vaccinating kids at school is fraught with the potential for error or even abuse.

Even a priority like curbing COVID shouldn’t trump parental oversight on such fundamental matters as health care.

From the school to the county health department to state health administrators, there’s blame enough to go around in this case – and it’s rooted in a fevered public-policy push to vaccinate as many kids as possible.

If the school nurse has to follow the rules, so should public health authorities. To avoid any confusion, better to let kids get vaccinated elsewhere – at their parents’ discretion.

Denver Gazette editorial board