“Proof of vaccination should be required for students attending public schools.”

School vaccine requirements sit at the crossroads of two things people care about deeply: protecting kids who share classrooms with each other, and a parent's right to decide what goes into their own child's body. Some states have been tightening exemptions to shore up herd immunity, while others have been loosening or eliminating mandates entirely in the name of parental choice — and both camps see the other side's approach as putting children at risk, just in different ways.

Dr. Richard Besser, pediatrician, President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (mandates protect the community): "We have joined the rank of countries where vaccination is not reaching the levels needed to protect all of our children... Measles is the canary in the coal mine. What it's saying is that our communities are vulnerable, not just from measles, but from whooping cough, meningitis, chicken pox and other diseases that are readily controllable with vaccines." Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida Surgeon General (mandates violate parental rights): moved to end "every last one" of the state's school vaccine mandates, saying, "Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? I don't have that right." He added: "This is an issue very clearly of parents' rights." Marci A. Hamilton, legal scholar (a middle path — keep mandates, narrow the exemptions): argues the real problem isn't vaccine requirements themselves but how easy states have made it to opt out, calling for religious and philosophical exemptions to be rolled back while preserving mandates and legitimate medical exemptions.