Explore the vaccination rates of every school in Vermont
[S]tate officials are asking public and private school administrators to follow-up with the families of unvaccinated children as a record number of measles cases are reported across the country – and popping up in every state and province bordering Vermont.
Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said the state needs to act “with the number of measles cases approaching 1,000 nationwide.”
Overall, Vermont’s vaccination rates are high – 94.5% of the state’s K-12 students are fully vaccinated, and 97% have the MMR vaccine, which protects against mumps, measles, and rubella.
But top-line numbers hide wide variability in vaccination rates, and health officials are warning that under-immunized communities are susceptible to outbreaks.
In a memo to administrators sent earlier this week, Levine and Education Secretary Dan French notified each public and private school about their individual vaccination rates. The state also makes immunization rate data on all schools and licensed child care centers available online.
“Families of students who are provisionally enrolled, and of exempt students, should be instructed to receive needed vaccines over the summer and advised that adherence to the school entry requirements will be strictly enforced in the fall,” Levine and French wrote.
Health officials say schools should aim to have 95% of students immunized with the MMR vaccine to achieve “community immunity,” which helps protects those with compromised immune systems who cannot get vaccinated against the spread of disease.
According to health department data, 294 schools meet the 95% immunization threshold, and 110 don’t. Immunization rates are better in public schools, where 97.4% of children have had both doses of the MMR vaccine. In private schools, 93.2% do.
Measles is a highly infectious disease that can lead to hospitalization and, in rare cases, even death. If contracted while pregnant, it can also lead to miscarriage, early birth, and low birth-weight. Symptoms include a fever, full-body rash, cough, and runny nose. About 9 in 10 people with close contact to a person infected with the virus will get the disease if they are not vaccinated, according to public health officials.
The disease was considered eliminated in the United States in 2000, but the country has since seen outbreaks – sometimes severe – in the intervening years.
A record number of measles cases nationally have been recorded this year. Public health officials largely blame the anti-vaccine movement and the rise of misinformation about the health risks of vaccines online.
Three elementary schools in the Windham Central Supervisory Union have the worst MMR vaccination rates in Vermont for public schools: Windham (62.5%), Jamaica Village (71.7%), and Marlboro (82.9%) elementaries. A school official wasn’t available to comment Friday. Windham Central superintendent Bill Anton told WCAX last week that school nurses were reaching out to parents and had already seen rates improve since they’d been published by the Health Department.
Religious exceptions replaced the philosophical exemption
The worst vaccination rates are found in small religious schools that each enroll fewer than 20 students. The Brownington Parochial School and the three Twelve Tribes Community Church schools (in Rutland, Island Pond, and Bellows Pond) all have overall vaccination rates of 0%.
But certain secular private schools with sizable student populations also have very poor immunization rates – most notably, all three of the state’s Waldorf schools: at the Orchard Valley Waldorf School in East Montpelier, only 43.8% of children have the MMR vaccine, at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Shelburne, only 66.5% of students are immunized against measles, and at the Upper Valley Waldorf School in Quechee, 78.4% of students are.
At the Lake Champlain Waldorf School, which enrolls close to 200 children, director of development Laura Slesar said the school mostly takes a hands-off approach.
“As a school we don’t feel like medical decisions are in our purview,” she said.
Slesar stressed that the school makes sure the families of unvaccinated children are following the law by filing the necessary exemption paperwork, and that the school provides to those families the legally mandated information.
But the school isn’t flagging this as an item of concern.
“When we have faculty meetings, this isn’t one of the things that teachers are talking about. As a school, our position is that we comply with the law,” she said.
Media reports from across the country suggest that Waldorf schools, which tout a “holistic” approach to learning, often have low vaccination rates. Last year, North Carolina saw its largest chickenpox outbreak in decades at an Asheville Waldorf school.
In Vermont, lawmakers got rid of the philosophical exemption to the state’s vaccination law in 2016. But while vaccination rates have gone up since that exemption was removed, the number of families using the religious exemption has shot up noticeably.
During the 2015-16 school year, the last year in which families could still claim the philosophical or religious exemptions, just 0.9% of kindergarteners were exempt for religious reasons; 4.6% were exempt on philosophical grounds. The following year, religious exemptions jumped to 3.7%. This year, it’s at 4.4%. (Families can also claim a medical exemption – with documentation from a medical provider – from vaccination, but that number has held steady at roughly 0.2%.)
“The data kind of implies that many of those who can no longer utilize the philosophical exemption have chosen to utilize the religious exemption,” Levine said.
Levine said many schools appear to be acting proactively to encourage immunization – including certain private religious schools, including those affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese in Burlington. And as the warm weather nears, the commissioner said he’s also gotten reports of summer camps and even resorts tightening – or for the first time creating – vaccination requirements.
The Tyler Place Family Resort in Highgate Springs is now asking customers if they’re vaccinated and refunding deposits if guests say any member of their party (unless they’re too young to get their shots) is unimmunized against measles.
The resort’s CEO, Ted Tyler, said he’d gotten a smattering of pushback, but mostly praise from relieved customers.
“There’s not much question that we have to pursue safety, and that’s what we do,” he said.
