During the 2015-16 school year 1.88 percent of all students in Conroe ISD submitted waivers seeking an exemption from mandated vaccines for reasons of conscience. This percentage equates to 1,064 students out of 58,239 students enrolled.

Vaccine exemptions are also on the rise in Tomball and Magnolia ISDs, which have attendance zones in The Woodlands.

“Although our numbers last year were 1.88 percent, it doesn’t mean that each child exempted all vaccines,” CISD Lead Nurse Barbara Robertson said. “The parent may choose that they don’t want the [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine, or they don’t want the meningococcal vaccine, so that number doesn’t indicate to us what they’re exempting, just that they have an exemption for at least one vaccine.”

The number of exemptions cited for reasons of conscience are rising statewide. Through this exemption, Texas law allows parents to not vaccinate their children, Robertson said.

“Our nurses do talk with parents about [their] concerns about vaccines to see if they can help get through that gap,” she said.

CISD follows the state guidelines for mandatory vaccines, Robertson said. To exempt a child from any vaccines, parents must download an application from the Texas Department of State Health Services and indicate which vaccines their child will not receive.

In the past four years, the number of students in TISD and MISD who have received waivers from mandated vaccines for reasons of conscience has risen by 85 percent and 13 percent, respectively, according to TDSHS.

A respective 1.46 percent and 1.82 percent of each district’s students filed for exemptions in the 2015-16 school year, which equates to more than 200 students from each district.

“The total number of students exempted from vaccinations is not significant to cause concern due to a high level of immunity within the community,” TISD Director of Health Services Cathy Pool said.

In some instances, children cannot get vaccinated because of pre-existing medical issues, Robertson said.

“The concern is for those children that cannot get vaccinated,” she said. “You have children that are organ transplant recipients [or] maybe their immune [system] is compromised, so they can’t get vaccinated. That’s the concern about those that are unvaccinated—getting something, such as whooping cough, and passing it to that child.”

Since the 1,064 unvaccinated students in CISD are spread out over 60 campuses, the chances of a serious outbreak of any preventable illness is low, Robertson said.

“This percentage is so low that we really have herd immunity,” she said. “It really protects those children [that cannot be vaccinated].”

Additional reporting by Anna Dembowski