It’s been five years since the state of Maine repealed philosophical and religious exemptions to the vaccine requirement to attend public schools. Since then, the Department of Education says 200 students have been dropped because of their vaccination status. Another 7,000 have voluntarily left the system and started homeschooling, although it’s unclear to what extent vaccine policy played a role.
Rebecca Brugman knew after the vaccine changes were made in 2021 that her unvaccinated kids wouldn’t be allowed to attend public school. Brugman said she trusted her children’s immune systems to protect them from disease. So, she withdrew her son, Isaiah, from the eighth grade and decided to homeschool him. But the decision came with consequences.
“We lost a lot of the school community, and I was really angry about that, and tried to get him even to after-school things, and it was basically like he was ostracized,” Brugman said.
Isaiah, now 18, remembers his mom telling him that he couldn’t go to school because he was unvaccinated.
“What the heck? Why can’t I go to school anymore? I was just kind of bummed that I wasn’t gonna get to see my friends as much. I was worried, you know, I’d fall behind in general, but it was rough,” he said.
Isaiah said there were a lot of extracurricular activities that he wasn’t able to do after leaving the public school system.
“I got to do band and wood shop, and they even had, like, a robotics club. So, I think I definitely loved those parts a lot more, being able to hang out with other people outside of the usual classes,” Isaiah said.
“When your world is consumed by the public school, you know your kids are in sports, your kids are in theater, all your friends go to your school, and you’re ripped away from that. Those families went through all the stages of grief,” said Brooke Thompson, the co-founder of the Maine Home Education Alliance.
Thompson said it was challenging for some families who felt abandoned by the state.
“When you don’t have time to prepare, when it’s unexpected, you know, that’s not the best way to start off your home education journey,” Thompson said.
When she purchased a home in Kennebunk in 2022, Jennifer Parke didn’t realize the new vaccine requirement was in place. Parke vaccinated her children when they were young but decided to stop during COVID. She didn’t want to homeschool her kids, so instead packed up and moved to Philadelphia.
“We called Maine our home. I bought a home, I wanted to settle there, and I thought that I would have the right to choose what I want for my children, right, until they’re 18 years old, and to be so forced out because of this really leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. Because every other experience I had in Maine was wonderful,” Parke said.
Among other things, Parke said she worries about a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism despite extensive scientific research that shows one does not exist.
“I don’t want to inject my children with it. I just don’t. I feel like the diseases are sort of already eradicated, and I’m just like, why, why would I just keep pumping my kids with these?” Parke said.
The National Medical Association said vaccination remains one of the safest and most effective tools to protect children and communities, but so far this year more than 4,000 Measles cases have been confirmed around the country, the highest number in three decades. At least two measles-related deaths have been reported in Pennsylvania. Despite this trend, vaccine hesitancy continues to climb, driven in part by misinformation online. And as it grows, so does the number of children being homeschooled.
“When you have a large group of people who are denied access to a public system, they will take their business elsewhere,” Trish Hutchins at Homeschoolers of Maine said.
Hutchins said the surge in homeschoolers in the last five years has radically changed the public school system.
“It’s kind of like introducing an element of competition to the school market that’s never been there before. But this does impact state and national funding for our local schools,” Hutchins said.
The Maine Department of Education was unable to provide anyone for comment for this story. But Hutchins believes the vaccine mandate has sped up the rate of school consolidation and closure across the state.
Vaccination rates among Maine kindergartners have steadily increased since 2019, but growing vaccine hesitancy is recognized by the World Health Organization as one of the most pressing threats to public health.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.