In Rockland County, six Orthodox Jewish schools of the 80 in the state database had vaccination rates below 90 percent, according to OJPAC, an Orthodox Jewish advocacy group. Taking the size of each school into account, 96 percent of all school-age Orthodox children in the county were vaccinated, the group said.
“Since virtually all kids at Jewish schools are fully caught up with their mandated vaccinations by the time they go to school, it is absurd to claim that this community as a collective has more anti-vaccination sentiments than elsewhere,” said Yossi Gestetner, the group’s co-founder.
In Oneida County, a tiny Amish school, Meadow Valley, reported that 11 percent of its students were vaccinated against polio. Dan Gilmore, the county’s director of public health, said he wasn’t sure that vaccinations were required in Amish schools, though he encourages them. In any case, he added, enforcement would fall to the state. The public health director in Cattaraugus County said that some 20 Amish schools in his area did not submit any vaccine information to the state.
The state Health Department confirmed that it is responsible for investigating complaints about vaccination reporting for private schools outside of New York City, conducting annual audits of a “select number” of schools and issuing corrective action plans. How often audits take place, however, is unclear.
After the state removed religious exemptions for vaccinations in 2019, one Amish family in rural Seneca County sued, saying they opposed vaccination because they believed “God made his children ‘right and good’ and to vaccinate his children is to lose faith in God,” according to the lawsuit.
Under state law, the family’s unvaccinated children should have been excluded from school. But although the family lost in a first round of the court battle, the state backed off and did not enforce the rule, said James G. Mermigis, the lawyer for the family, who dropped the action.