By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

California is auditing 428 schools with “low” vaccination rates amid declining vaccination levels for kindergarteners and a rise in measles cases that health officials blamed on the unvaccinated, EdSource reported today.

School districts with a vaccination rate of less than 95% are at risk of losing average daily attendance funding from the state.

In the schools being audited, more than 10% of kindergarteners or seventh graders in the schools were not fully vaccinated during the 2024-25 school year.

California requires children to be vaccinated against 10 serious communicable diseases for public or private school attendance and requires proof of vaccination in kindergarten and seventh grade.

Immunization is required for diphtheria, bacterial meningitis, measles, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, rubella, tetanus, hepatitis B and varicella (chicken pox). Students who have received some, but not all, of these vaccinations are considered “not fully vaccinated.”

EdSource reported that 62 schools — 55 public schools and seven charter schools — lost funding in the three years before the 2024-25 school year because their vaccination rates fell below the 95% threshold.

California attorney Rita Barnett-Rose said California “doesn’t shut schools down or strip them of all funding simply because vaccination rates are low.” However, the state has the legal authority to “enforce its vaccination laws through audits, compliance reviews, and attendance-based funding adjustments.”

“Schools with low vaccination rates are audited, pressured to exclude students, and can lose Average Daily Attendance funding for students the state deems non-compliant,” Barnett-Rose said.

These mechanisms act as “financial leverage to enforce immunization policy,” Barnett-Rose said.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said California’s threat of financial sanctions against schools constitutes “a punishment strictly to apply pressure and modify decisions, without regard to the circumstances or well-informed nature of those decisions.”

According to attorney Rick Jaffe, California’s school vaccination requirements are the “strictest” in the U.S. — “no personal belief exemption and no medical exemption from all vaccines exists.”

California is one of four states that don’t allow religious or philosophical exemptions from vaccination. Connecticut, Maine and New York are the others.

Attorney Ray Flores said that in the 2023-24 school year, only 0.1% of reported kindergarteners had medical exemptions.

“That low percentage is due to the state’s persecution of doctors granting medical exemptions,” Flores said.

Parents ‘reacting rationally’ by questioning vaccines

According to EdSource, “Vaccine hesitancy, fueled by the Covid pandemic, has reduced vaccination rates across the country,” including in California.

“Vaccine hesitancy has increased since COVID — and with good reason,” Barnett-Rose said. “COVID exposed serious failures in public health, and federal agencies are now openly acknowledging data gaps that were long ignored.”

“Parents are reacting rationally to new information. California’s insistence on blind compliance is what’s out of step,” Barnett-Rose added.

“Shifting federal policies” have also contributed to “vaccine hesitancy,” EdSource reported.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reduced the number of vaccines in the recommended childhood immunization schedule from 17 to 11. EdSource cited experts who suggested that new federal requirements could lead more parents to forego vaccinations for their children.

The California Department of Public Health now recommends parents follow the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) vaccination schedule, which is largely identical to the CDC’s recommendations before its recent rollback.

Last week, CHD and five other plaintiffs sued the AAP, accusing the organization of running a decades-long racketeering scheme to defraud American families about the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule.

“Instead of following CDC-recommended guidelines, California has deferred to the AAP, a special-interest group funded by Big Pharma, with Merck, Moderna, Pfizer, Sanofi and CSL Seqirus each giving $50,000 or more,” Jablonowski said.

California using ‘bullying tactics’ against schools

Jaffe said it was noteworthy that student vaccination rates declined despite California’s strict mandates.

“How do 428 schools have 10%+ unvaccinated kids?” Jaffe asked. “That is probably not hesitancy finding a legal outlet. I think it’s likely conditional enrollment becoming a de facto exemption, and schools not enforcing the law.”

“California allows grace periods for incoming students, homeless and foster children who are allowed to enroll immediately and temporarily attend while records are gathered, or a catch-up schedule begins,” Flores said. “These groups will eventually show proof, or they will be expelled.”

California attorney Greg Glaser said the state’s regulations — and its policy of auditing schools that fall below a 95% vaccination rate — “represent bullying tactics of a surveillance state.”

“When public health officials cannot convince parents through open scientific dialogue, they resort to violating children’s privacy rights to enforce compliance,” Glaser said. Jaffe cited the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

“Unable to persuade parents that mandatory vaccination is necessary or useful, the state has decided to violate children’s privacy rights instead,” Glaser said.

EdSource connected falling vaccination rates in California to a growth in measles cases in the state, with 25 cases recorded in 2025, part of a nationwide increase in reported cases.

“Shifting federal policies and new measles cases are again making vaccination a national conversation,” EdSource reported.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said that blaming rising measles cases on the increasing number of students who are not “fully vaccinated” is a bait-and-switch tactic, not based on evidence. He said:

“The term ‘fully vaccinated’ has nothing to do with measles, as a 4- to 5-year-old child in California could be missing only the hepatitis B shot … to be considered unvaccinated.

“The undercurrent here is more about compliance and control than measles. Otherwise, the California Department of Public Health would be looking at measles-mumps-rubella vaccination rates only.”

California ‘treats pharmaceutical orthodoxy as a political identity’

California recently sought to distance itself from new federal public health and vaccination policies.

Last week, California became the first state to join the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the move one day after the U.S. formally withdrew from the WHO.

Last year, California joined Oregon, Washington and Hawaii in creating the West Coast Health Alliance, a public health partnership intended to issue its own immunization guidelines.

“California has a monoculture that insulates health officials from accountability. Joining the western states coalition on AAP guidance and the WHO network the day after U.S. withdrawal — those are political statements, not public health necessities,” Jaffe said.

Barnett-Rose said such actions show that California “treats pharmaceutical orthodoxy as a political identity.”

“State leaders double down on mandates to signal loyalty to institutions, not because the policies work. Even as federal agencies quietly walk things back, California escalates — because admitting error would expose how much harm its COVID-19 policies caused,” Barnett-Rose said.

One of the plaintiffs in CHD’s lawsuit against the AAP, pediatrician Dr. Kenneth Stoller, lost his medical license in California after he granted medical exemptions to vaccine mandates.

In 2022, California passed Assembly Bill 2098, which aimed to punish doctors for spreading COVID-19 “misinformation” or “disinformation.” The law came into effect in 2023, but a federal judge blocked the bill after granting an injunction requested by CHD in a lawsuit challenging the bill. California repealed the bill later that year.

Barnett-Rose said vaccination rates in California aren’t declining due to “misinformation.”

“California parents aren’t becoming ‘hesitant’ because of misinformation — they’re reacting to long-overdue admissions about data gaps and COVID-19 policy failures. California wants obedience, not informed consent, and that’s why trust continues to erode here,” Barnett-Rose said.

Related articles in The Defender

• One Day After U.S. Exits WHO, California Joins International WHO Network
• ‘Dangerous Games’: States Defy Federal Agencies, Create Their Own COVID Vaccine Rules
• Breaking: Children’s Health Defense Hits AAP With RICO Suit Over Fraudulent Vaccine Safety Claims
• Leading Pediatrician Group Defies CDC, Tells Parents to Get COVID Shots for Infants, Kids
• Breaking: HHS Makes Sweeping Changes to Childhood Vaccine Schedule

The post ‘Blind Compliance’: California Threatens Funding for Schools With ‘Low’ Vaccination Rates appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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