What's your school's vaccination rate?
The map above shows schools in New York that reported vaccination numbers for the 2017-2018 school year, the most recent available. To find the measles vaccination rate at a specific school, click the drop down menu to find your school.
The schools that have met the herd immunity standard of 95% are shown in green, and the schools that fall below a measles vaccination rate below 95% are shown in red.
Source: New York Department of Health and Education
Using data provided by the Departments of Health and Education in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, 7 On Your Side Investigates examined immunization and exemption rates for the measles vaccine at the school, district and county level.
When a significant portion of the community has immunity to a particular disease, doctors say the disease is less likely to spread. The World Health Organization recommends vaccination/immunity rates in the mid-90% range to achieve this goal.
Following the worst measles outbreak in the US in over 25 years, with roughly 83% of the cases in New York, we explored which schools had vaccination rates below 95%, as recommended by WHO. School campuses that report a measles vaccination rate under 95%, are mapped in RED.
Comparing schools at the Tri-State level proved difficult. We had to rely on data from the 2017/2018 school year, the only school year with comparable data provided by all three states.
Additionally, reporting varied by school and state. In Connecticut, for instance, state health officials only report vaccination rates for specific schools in kindergarten and 7th grade. Additionally, Connecticut said it withheld vaccination rates for certain schools with low enrollment to protect student privacy.
New York City reports public school vaccination rates by borough and despite repeated requests did not release individual school data to Eyewitness News. Rates for public schools by borough are indicated in this map.
New Jersey reported vaccination rates by county. Those numbers are indicated in this map. A New Jersey Health Department website does allow for a school-by-school search of specific municipalities, but due to time constraints and the desire to provide this information as quickly as possible, we were unable to obtain individual data for all schools. The specific schools we were able to obtain information for are included in this map.
Because the data provided by state officials in many cases is based on rates, comparisons across jurisdictions are estimates.
We found nearly 12% of school entities providing vaccination data to New York State health officials, reported measles vaccination rates below the 95% threshold recommended by doctors in the 2017/2018 school year.
Between the 2010/2011 and 2017/2018 school years, the number of students with religious exemptions in NY increased by 89% and medical exemptions increased by 36% even though overall enrollment dropped by 3%.
Rockland County and Brooklyn, where the largest number of measles cases in the state have been concentrated, indicated a larger percentage of school entities with vaccination rates below the 95% threshold than other jurisdictions, roughly 24% in Brooklyn and 37% in Rockland County.
More than 70% of counties in New Jersey reported vaccination rates below 95%. Only Burlington, Camden, Cumberland, Gloucester, Hudson and Salem Counties reported vaccination rates above the 95% threshold.
Based on data for Kindergarten and 7th grade, Connecticut had a statewide vaccination average of 96.3%.
However, over 100 individual schools dipped below the 95% vaccination threshold recommended by doctors. For instance, roughly 15% of kindergartens in Fairfield County reported vaccination rates below 95%. By 7th grade, the number of schools reporting vaccination rates below the 95% threshold fell to roughly 5%.