Americans this century have moved away from supporting the loudly proclaimed exhortation that it is extremely important that children take a slew of shots states impose for school attendance in vaccine mandates. This changing sentiment is manifesting among parents in their increasingly, where able, opting their children out these shots mandates.
Mary Kekatos reported Monday at ABC News that new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that in the 2025-26 school year parents had obtained a vaccine exemption for a record high 4.2 percent of kindergarteners in America. While a small percent of students, this is a significant increase over the 3.6 percent of kindergarteners with a vaccine exemption the previous year and approaches double the 2.2 percent exemption rate in the 2020-21 school year.
For other parents, sidestepping vaccine mandates has been part of the reason, or even the entire reason, they have chosen that their children attend private schools in states where the mandates only apply to government schools, or attend homeschool. In these alternative schooling options parents can avoid shots for their children without obtaining exemptions.
While parents have been increasingly choosing not to have their children take all the pushed shots, states including California and New York have been changing the law to nearly eliminate the ability to opt out for children attending government and even private schools.
