The share of school-aged children in Michigan skipping regularly scheduled shots is at its highest level in 10 years, raising fresh questions about state rules on vaccine exemption waivers in the post-pandemic era.
The rate of school immunization waivers climbed to 7.1% last year, up from 6.2% in 2024, the latest in a five-year streak of worsening vaccine participation. The period is marked by the onset of COVID-19 and a schism in federal recommendations and evidence-based guidance.
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The latest state data represents the highest exemption rates since 2010, when 8.6% of all students in state schools got permission to miss at least some of the routine slate of shots long recommended by the medical community as a safe and effective means to protect against deadly infectious diseases like whooping cough and measles.
“Schools are locations where a lot of children are together,” said Abram Wagner, an epidemiologist with the University of Michigan School of Public Health who researches vaccine programs. “It can be very easy to spread vaccine-preventable diseases there, and especially for schools which have high rates of waivers … it’s just much easier to spread these infectious diseases.”
Kindergarten students lead the emerging trend in Michigan, with 7.7% receiving waivers last year, compared to 6.8% in 2024. The state reports a 7.2% waiver rate for seventh graders in 2025, while waivers granted to students new to their districts stood at 6.6%. Nearly 25,000 students in the state were reported to have vaccine exemptions last year. That’s out of more than 345,000 public and private school students with complete immunization documentation.
The state is outpacing the national average for immunization exemptions, too.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports rates for kindergarten students increased to 4.2% during the 2025-2026 school year, up from 3.6% the year before. Nationally, exemption rates increased in 41 states and the District of Columbia, with about two dozen reporting rates exceeding 5%.
State data show that urban and suburban districts have the lowest waiver rates. Kindergarten students at Ann Arbor Public Schools, Portage Public Schools, East Grand Rapids Public Schools and Novi Community School District, for example, have vaccination completion rates near the 95% that health officials consider the benchmark for herd immunity.
School districts with the highest waiver rates track northward and within rural communities, like Lapeer Community Schools, Howell Public Schools and North Branch Area Schools, which have kindergarten waiver rates in the double digits.
Online schools also top the list. Ninety-three of the 205 kindergarten students at Oxford Virtual Academy were granted waivers. Oxford led the state with the most reported waivers for kindergarten students.
Public schools had a total immunization rate of 90% in 2025, according to MDHHS, while private school rates were at 80.9%.
Michigan’s vaccine exemption rate dropped as low as 3.1% in 2015, as new waiver rules took effect. The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR), a bipartisan state legislative committee with certain department oversight, began requiring parents to attend a vaccine education session with their local health department to receive exemption documentation. After the rule’s adoption, rates remained below 4% until 2021, the first full year after the onset of COVID-19.
Wagner said studies show waiver regulations often have a short-term effect, but people find out how to “game the system” over time.
“They learn where the loopholes are. They learn what they can do to get the waiver and then push forward that way,” Wagner told Bridge Michigan. “It’s not surprising that it’s gone up, but it’s kind of taken a while for it to go up.”
Wagner said political and cultural forces are likely prompting the shift, with 2020 marking an “inflection point.”
In the years following the onset of the pandemic, attitudes refuting official immunization guidance have cropped up across the state. St. Clair County eased access to vaccine waivers this year.
Others who want to end the state’s vaccine waiver system as practiced have found a sympathetic ear on the Michigan State Board of Education.
Republican board member Tom McMillin, a former state lawmaker and JCAR chair who opposed adopting the state’s rule mandating education sessions for immunization waivers, called the issue “near and dear” to his heart, with many people concerned about being “unfairly treated” for their choices.
McMillin said at a recent board meeting that his office had received “hundreds” of emails from parents complaining that schools refuse to accept written statements seeking to exempt their children from vaccine requirements and they want guidance from the state health department.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said the administrative rule that went into effect in 2015 requires certification for nonmedical exemptions by local health departments, with waiver forms being handled by officials there.
Michigan reported 16 cases of measles this summer as the US grapples with a series of outbreaks in other states. Measles-linked deaths in Pennsylvania have become a political flashpoint as the federal government shifts its reporting on the disease and overall posture on immunizations.
Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling to reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11, earning the condemnation of senior officials of the World Health Organization.
In response, Michigan’s chief medical executive affirmed the state’s standing recommendation to follow the childhood vaccine schedule established by the American Academy of Pediatrics and a dozen other health care groups.
“We understand that shifts in federal guidance can create uncertainty for parents and physicians, so we want to provide clarity,” Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive, said at the time.
The uncoupling of federal recommendations and the broader medical community has shifted public perception about vaccine safety. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday indicates fewer Americans trust childhood vaccines today than they did in 2020, noting a marked drop in Republican attitudes.
The state’s declining vaccination participation has elicited new advocacy efforts to reverse the trend. The Michigan for Vaccines coalition launched this summer to improve local immunization policy, combining the voice of public health workers, physicians and advocates.
“We’re all linking arms and walking together on this and making sure we are amplifying what our state frankly needs, which is pro-vaccine policy,” coalition director Megan Petzko-Sweet told Bridge in June.
After losing her 12-week-old daughter Francesca Marie to whooping cough in 2012, Veronica McNally has led vaccination campaigns in the state as president of the West Blomfield-based Franny Strong Foundation.
An attorney and director of trial advocacy at Michigan State University, McNally said some parents focus on the dangers of immunization without fully recognizing the risk of choosing not to vaccinate.
“The decisions that these parents are making, whether they like it or not, whether they appreciate it or not, are dramatically affecting all of the other children in that community,” McNally told Bridge.
Most parents cannot fully appreciate the risks associated with vaccine-preventable diseases, McNally said, with medical misinformation widely available online setting a foundation for a worsening trend.
Previously serving as the consumer representative on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, McNally was removed from a federal advisory commission on childhood vaccines earlier this year before her term expired.
She said she’s concerned about the federal shift towards “ shared clinical decision making ” and “ informed consent ” — concepts heralded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, vaccine skeptics and the parental rights movement.
“No one can be completely informed as a lay person regarding all of those diseases,” McNally said. “Now we have just an enormous disruption of public health policy at the federal level, which is to a large extent creating confusion in parents.”
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This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
