I was wondering that, so I asked the school nurse what percentage of the students at our local high school were unvaccinated. Here’s her response:
“We are unable to provide this information to you because it is in violation of the FERPA laws.”
FERPA stands for Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and it protects the release of medical information that identifies students. For example, it would prevent the release of a list of names of students who had vaccination exemptions. It would also prohibit the release of, say, the highest BMI value at the school, because students at the school could probably guess the identity of the kid visually. But an aggregate statistic like % unvaccinated does not identify students in any way. Indeed, dozens of states and tens of thousands of schools release their vaccination statistics to the public yearly, and typically provide the number of students with medical, religious, personal exemptions. So FERPA clearly doesn’t not prevent schools from releasing rather detailed vaccination data. Although it’s possible that some schools are unaware of this, it’s probably more likely that schools see FERPA as a useful way to hide information that might generate criticism of the school’s readiness for, say, a measles outbreak.
Here’s the thing: parents need to know that this percentage is, right now. If measles were to come to a school next week, can parents still send their children into school? What if a student has a medical exemption — is the herd immunity strong (perhaps 96% vaccinated), or is it dismal (50%)? Only when the parents know these data can they assess whether the school is safe.
By the way, the school principal is ultimately responsible for granting exemptions to all the parents who request them for their kids. For example, a principal can (and should) refuse medical exemptions if the reasoning is ignorant (“I don’t want my kid to get autism”). Similarly, religious and philosophical objections can be rejected if they clearly grasping at reality. For example, a parent might write, “The Pope would be displeased if my kid was vaccinated”, and the principal is allowed to reject that claim because it’s demonstrably untrue. If a principal accepts every single claim, then the rates of unvaccinated students at that school will be high, and the word will spread among anti-vax parents that s/he’s a pushover.
I suspect there are millions of parents around the country asking for the same information and getting the same answer from their schools. So I’ve posted a list of where to get school vaccination data, organized by state, at “Vaccinations rates at schools“. It’s a draft, so if you have suggestions on how I can fill in the many gaps, please get in touch with me.
