Heartland Charter School in Kern County is hosting several dream field trips on its calendar this spring. This includes the In Inn Now Burger tour, a matinee performance of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” at the Hollywood Pantage on a ride on the Amtrak train along the Central Coast.
While going out may not seem unusual, Hartland’s student body differs from other California schools in one major way.
According to a time analysis of data reported by California schools to the state, only 5% of Heartland’s 810 kindergarten students received all childhood vaccines last year, and 9% were vaccinated against measles. Last year, the vaccination rate for kindergarten students across the state was 93.7%.
Heartland is one of the largest independent learning charter schools in California, allowing parents to register their children in the public school system, but avoids the state’s strict vaccine requirements by educating them at home or online.
Such programs, sometimes called homeschool charters, online charters, and virtual charters, have boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic and offer more flexibility than traditional schools.
They also serve as a legal shelter for California parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children or leave the public school system. Some public health departments in Golden State have attributes to lower vaccination rates in such programs, allowing hundreds or even thousands of children to register.
The publicly funded school is one of the few soft spots remaining in California’s strict childhood vaccination laws, where lawmakers have become stricter after the measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in 2014 caused more than 300 people to become ill.
In 2015, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 277. In 2019, they increased scrutiny of medical exemptions for unvaccinated children. By law, parents can be enrolled in independent research programs and skipped vaccinations for children “not receiving classroom-based guidance.”
However, the state’s vaccination laws do not specify the meaning of “classroom-based instruction.” This can be when students attend in-person classes offered by schools or third-party vendors, or when they participate in school management activities such as field trips, soccer practices, and proms.
“There’s a huge amount of grey area,” said Jeffreys, founder and director of ASSN. A product group of personalized learning schools and services, or charter schools with students pursuing a mix of Aplus+, in-person, home and online learning.
Under the California Education Code, schools are “non-classroom based” if 80% of learning occurs on campus.
When California tightened its vaccination laws, Rice said it wanted clarity in vaccination requirements for students who don’t attend traditional in-person schools five days a week. Rather than defining what “non-classroom-based instruction” means, the state said it left the decision to the school board and the county education department that regulate charter schools.
Of the 100 schools that are Aplus+ members, two-thirds of students take in-person classes at least one day a week, Rice said.
“Vaccinations are a small issue for parents who have very strong and passionate feelings about it,” Rice said. Schools with low vaccination rates “reflect the values of their individual communities,” he said.
According to a statement from the state Department of Education, the Department of Public Health oversees California law “outlines rules for forced vaccination.” A public health spokesperson said the department “has no regulatory authority on this issue,” adding that “decisions regarding student participation in school field trips or track and field sports will be determined at the local level.”
The US is in the midst of the largest measles outbreak in six years, with 800 cases and three deaths reported in 25 states, including nine cases in California.
Dr. Shannon Udovich Contanto, a pediatrician in San Francisco and president of the California Medical Association, said measles are “incredibly contagious” and can spread if someone coughs or sneezes and hits the air for up to two hours. She said 90% of exposed unvaccinated people will contract for measles.
Because she wasn’t vaccinated, she said, “It’s a risk, a risk you can’t see.”
The majority of unvaccinated students are enrolled in individualized education plans or independent research programs. This means that you don’t need to be vaccinated under state law. The number of students reporting medical exemptions granted by doctors is very low.
Most of the state’s largest online charter schools had low vaccination rates, but not all. The Riverside County Riverside County River Springs Charter, which reported a mix of online and in-person instruction, said 77% of 1,036 kindergarten students were the latest in all vaccines last year, state data shows.
Feather River Charter School in Sutter County, part of Northern California’s Sequoia Grove Charter Alliance, has reported to state regulators that the program is 100% “non-classroom based.” Last year, 18% of the school’s 321 kindergarten students were the latest in all vaccines, and 21% were vaccinated against measles. Two other schools in the alliance also reported that the overall vaccination rate last year was under 20%.
The Alliance website includes Elk Grove’s “Tween/Teen Games Meet Up,” regular library visits, and a calendar featuring masquerade-themed Prom Night Friday. A video posted to Feather River’s Facebook shows a large group of children taking part in a recent field trip to Shasta Caverns.
According to state data, in the Vision in Sacramento County’s Education Vision, 40% of the school’s 580 kindergarten students were up to date in all shots, with 44% being vaccinated against measles. The school requires students to obtain TDAP boosters for students in grade 7 and above. This provides increased immunity to tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis or pertussis, or hooping cough. On the Instagram account, the school sells junior high school soccer clubs and ice skate field trips.
Representatives from Heartland and the Sequoia Grove Alliance did not respond to requests for comment.
“As part of the longstanding California public school community, our commitment to accountability includes following state and federal laws,” Education Supt’s vision. Steve Ormos said he had issued a statement via email.
Ormos did not address questions about whether students should be vaccinated to participate in field trips or group sports, but said the school has a “comprehensive system for asking families about the history of their students’ vaccines while registering.”
Former state Sen. Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat who wrote the California vaccine law, met in person regularly to say it “certainly violates the spirit of the law.” Still, he said the low vaccination rates at online charter schools didn’t surprise him.
“It was a deliberate option that we offered to those families that they weren’t in school with all the other kids that they had none in school,” Pan said. But he said he was at risk of contracting an epidemic if he gathered a cohort of unvaccinated children.
“They shouldn’t do it regularly or often,” he said.
Lance Christensen, vice president of education policy and government affairs at the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank, challenged the idea that some schools and parents are using online programs to avoid vaccination requirements while operating in a similar way to traditional in-person classrooms.
“There’s no loophole in the law,” Christensen said. “They use legal measures that they have to do whatever they want to do. Whether I agree with it or not, I don’t care… I’m not everyone’s dad.”
Christensen, who failed to run for public guidance overseer in 2022, said he vaccinated five children and believed in the importance of childhood immunization.
Like many families during the pandemic, he enrolled his children at virtual charter schools when schools in the Sacramento area remained closed. Many families choose these schools for a variety of reasons, as they believe that they provide better education than traditional in-person public schools, whether they are vaccine-related.
Sutter County School Superintendent Tom Royser said such virtual schools will primarily blame the county’s childhood vaccination rates. Most of his district’s traditional in-person public schools report vaccination rates primarily of around 95%, he said.
“We pulled out the charter and we’re doing well,” Lower said.
Sutter County Public Health officials also attributed the decline in vaccination rates to “a small number of charter schools and independent students.” The “majority” of students enrolled in those schools do not live in the county, they said.
Homeschool and online charter allow students from both Home and surrounding counties. For example, Feather River serves students in Sutter, Butte, Yuba, Placer, Sacramento, Yolo and Corusa counties, according to the school’s website. Karn County schools such as Heartland can also register students from San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Kings, Tulea and Inho counties.
In Heartland, parents are asked to keep their children home if someone in the family is sick, but vaccination requirements are not mentioned. A Q&A posted on the Sutter County school website found that vaccinations are not required as the school is a “independent research program without classroom-based instruction.”
“You will be asked to submit a vaccination form when you register, but it does not need to be complete and will not affect your registration status,” the website reads.
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