Schools

Patch Stats: Opting Out of Vaccines

Parents of 11 percent of kindergartners at Pleasant Grove Elementary signed waivers last year saying vaccinating their children is against their personal beliefs.

Vaccines are a hot topic in parenting and public health lately, with new state requirements that secondary school students be vaccinated for whooping cough and a national debate over immunizing girls to protect them from cervical cancer. Patch looked into how often local parents are opting out of having their kids vaccinated.

At , 11 percent of last year's kindergartners started school without the full battery of vaccinations because their parents or guardians signed affidavits stating, “all or some vaccinations are contrary to my personal beliefs.”

It's the highest rate in the , though the school's small size may play a role in boosting the percentage.

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Dolly Chamberlain, the school office assistant who maintains those records, says that while she respects parents' choices, it worries her when they opt out.

"All it takes is one [sick] person to come in here, whether they're a visitor or a student, and those kids could get it," she said. "I don't think it's a good idea."

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Chamberlain said some parents mention the possibility that vaccines could cause learning disabilities, while others decline to give a reason for signing the waiver. Patch wasn't able to reach Elk Grove parents with waivers on file for this story.

But up the road at the California Montessori Project in College-Glen, parent Catrina Arcularius explained it to a Patch reporter this way: "It's just too much too early for their little bodies."

Critics of exemptions, on the other hand, say they endanger not only those who decline the shots but others around them, by compromising "herd immunity"—the protective factor that comes from having large numbers of people vaccinated against a particular disease.

In the case of measles or pertussis (the scientific name for whooping cough), a community needs to maintain a 95 percent vaccination rate to keep the disease from spreading, said James Watt, chief of communicable disease for the California Department of Public Health. When there is an outbreak of those diseases, it’s usually children too small to be vaccinated and people with weak immune systems who get sick first.  

“If you are in a school with a high rate of personal belief exemptions, it may be necessary to pull your kids out [when there’s an outbreak],” Watt said.

He allowed that there are reasons some parents are skeptical about public health programs: Within living memory, the United States government infected prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis to test penicillin. For 40 years, public health officials in Alabama failed to treat black sharecroppers with syphilis as part of a longitudinal study investigating the venereal disease.

“Those kinds of things contribute to skepticism,” he said. “The important thing is to be as transparent as possible, to be science-based about the good, the bad and the ugly.  And when issues come out, to be frank and to investigate them vigorously.”

Despite the higher rate at Pleasant Grove, the percentage of kindergartners declining vaccinations in Elk Grove Unified as a whole last year was the same as the statewide average: two percent.

Of the district's 28,200 students in grades seven through 12, only 226—or less than 1 percent—have signed the separate, specific waiver required to decline the whooping cough vaccine. Another 21 are currently barred from attending classes because they have neither gotten the shot nor submitted an exemption form.

Still, there's an impact on the district's bottom line.

"For every student who misses a day of school...we lose $30 per day per student in state funding," district spokesperson Elizabeth Graswich wrote in an email.

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Elk Grove Unified School District schools with the highest rates of personal belief exemptions from vaccines, according to the California Department of Public Health:

School

2010 Kindergarten Enrollment

Number of personal belief exemptions

Percent exempted

Pleasant Grove Elementary

56

6

11

James McKee Elementary

75

5

7

John Erhardt Elementary

142

8

6

Cosumnes River Elementary

84

5

6

Robert Fite Elementary

61

3

5


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