Vaccinations rise when states button up religious loopholes

Unlike other kids in Massachusetts, students living in one Boston suburb won’t be able to go back to school next month unless they’ve had their chickenpox and measles shots, as well as other routine childhood vaccinations.“Any student not fully vaccinated without exemption will be excluded from school,” Newton Public Schools Superintendent Anna Nolin wrote in a memo last month.

Unlike other kids in Massachusetts, students living in one Boston suburb won’t be able to go back to school next month unless they’ve had their chickenpox and measles shots, as well as other routine childhood vaccinations.

“Any student not fully vaccinated without exemption will be excluded from school,” Newton Public Schools Superintendent Anna Nolin wrote in a memo last month. The directive followed a chickenpox outbreak among students, as well as rising threats of measles, Nolin said.

But unvaccinated students without medical reasons to forgo the shots can still get a pass to attend class in Massachusetts: a religious exemption.

According to state immunization data, vaccination rates among kindergartners in Massachusetts have been falling — from 95.9% in 2020 to 94.3% this past school year — as the proportion of students with religious exemptions has risen: 0.93% in 2020 to 1.33% currently.

Schools in Massachusetts loosened vaccination requirement rules during the pandemic, allowing unvaccinated students to attend class without exemptions. In some areas of the state, the proportion of students who are allowed to skip shots because of exemptions is as high as 12.8%, according to the state’s data.