These Schools In Napa County Have Low Vaccination Rates: Report

NAPA COUNTY, CA — Two schools in Napa County are among those being audited by the state because they reported that more than 10 percent of their kindergarten or seventh-grade students were not fully vaccinated last school year, according to a news report Thursday.

Schools that allow students to attend school without all their vaccinations are in jeopardy of losing funding. The audit list, released by the California Department of Public Health, includes 450 schools serving kindergarten students and 176 schools serving seventh graders with low vaccination rates. Fifty-six of the schools serve both grade levels. Another 39 schools failed to file a vaccination report with the state, according to EdSource.

"Schools found to have improperly admitted students who have (not) met immunization requirements may be subject to loss of average daily attendance payments for those children," the California Department of Public Health said in an email.

Students who are overdue for their vaccinations or who have been admitted to schools conditionally while they catch up on vaccines are not fully vaccinated, according to the state. Students who are in special education or have a medical exemption are not required to be vaccinated.

California law requires school staff to report vaccination rates to the state each fall and to check up on those catching up on vaccinations while attending school at least every 30 days. If the student who is catching up on their vaccines does not have a second dose of a vaccine within four months of the first dose, they must be excluded from school, according to a state audit guide.

"After the personal belief exemption was gone, we found a significant number of schools were behind on their reporting and were allowing a lot of conditional admissions and weren't following up," said Catherine Flores Martin, director of the California Immunization Coalition.

A map by EdSource shows two schools in Napa County, Stone Bridge School in Napa and Pope Valley Elementary, were on the state's audit list.

Stone Bridge, a K-8 charter school in Napa, had 41 kindergartners, 17.1 percent of whom were not fully vaccinated, in the 2022-2023 school year, according to EdSource. The audit from the state showed 90.2 percent of Stone Bridge students had their MMR2 (measles, mumps and rubella) and Varicella (chickenpox) immunizations.

At Pope Valley, there were six kindergarteners last year, 33.3 percent of whom were not fully vaccinated, the EdSource report showed. The state audit report showed that 100 percent of the school's students had their MMR2 and Varicella immunizations. The school had a total student population of around 50 in 2020-2021.

In Oakland, more than 30 Oakland Unified schools made the audit list.

The Bay Area district wasn't the only large school district struggling to get students fully vaccinated, according to state data. Los Angeles Unified has 75 of its non-charter schools on the audit list, while Pomona Unified had 13, San Francisco Unified 14 and San Juan Unified in Sacramento County, eight.

Read the full report from EdSource here.