State Vaccination Oversight Tightened

Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills on Monday, September 9, that will further tighten California’s childhood immunization requirements. Parents opposed to vaccinations protested Senate Bills 714 and 276 in Sacramento last week, chanting “protect our children” at assemblymembers after the bills were approved. In the Senate, one protestor even dumped her own menstrual blood on the floor on Friday.

The bills will create stricter state oversight of medical exemptions for vaccines required to attend public and private schools — including investigating any doctor who provides more than five medical exemptions in a year and any school with an immunization rate below 95 percent. Kindergarteners in the Santa Barbara Unified School District have a better than 96 percent vaccination rate.