W. Va. Code § 18-2-5C

This is the official text of W. Va. Code § 18-2-5C, part of West Virginia’s Va. Code — part of the compiled statutory law of West Virginia, published by the state as "Va. Code." Browse the sections below, each linked to its official government source.

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§18-2-5c. Birth certificate required upon admission to public school; required notice to local law-enforcement agency of missing children.

Official statutory text

(a) No pupil shall be admitted for the first time to any public school in this state unless the person enrolling the pupil presents a copy of the pupil's original birth record certified by the state registrar of vital statistics confirming the pupil's identity, age, and state file number of the original birth record. If a certified copy of the pupil's birth record cannot be obtained, the person so enrolling the pupil shall submit an affidavit explaining the inability to produce a certified copy of the birth record: Provided, That if any person submitting such affidavit is in U.S. military service and is in transit due to military orders, a three-week extension shall be granted to such person for providing the birth records.

(b) Upon the failure of any person enrolling a pupil to furnish a certified copy of the pupil's birth record in conformance with subsection (a) above, the principal of the school in which the pupil is being enrolled or his designee shall immediately notify the local law-enforcement agency. The notice to the local law-enforcement agency shall include copies of the submitted proof of the pupil's identity and age and the affidavit explaining the inability to produce a certified copy of the birth record.

(c) Within fourteen days after enrolling a transferred pupil, the principal of the school in which the pupil has been enrolled or his designee shall request that the principal or his designee of the school in which the pupil was previously enrolled transfer a certified copy of the pupil's birth record.

(d) Principals and their designees shall be immune from any civil or criminal liability in connection with any notice to a local law-enforcement agency of a pupil lacking a birth certificate or failure to give such notice as required by this section.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.