No Mandatory Vaccination Proposal From Board Of Ed

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 12/09/2025) The State Board of Education is not recommending mandatory vaccinations at public schools, but members seemed at a loss for answers on Tuesday as the state's chief medical executive officer told them how vaccination levels are dropping.

Before COVID, complete vaccination coverage among Michigan seventh graders had reached 90.8%, which was still down from 93.9% in 2019.

Now, some private kindergartens have as low as 29% of children up to date on their shots. Statewide, 68.4% of children between 19 and 35 months are completely vaccinated. The numbers stem from COVID-19, when public distrust of vaccinations accelerated as government officials pushed for usage of the hastily-made vaccine.

“I think it’s going to take years, maybe decades, to undo the erosion of trust that we’ve seen in public institutions and government entities," Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Chief Medical Executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian told the board, “The damage that has been done is deep, but what still remains is trust in individuals and trust in people that you have a relationship with.”

She said people still trust their doctor and school nurse to give them the best information, which means DHHS was working with doctors, nurses, pastors, and other community leaders to make sure they had the best information possible regarding childhood vaccinations.

Commentators at Tuesday’s board of education meeting indicated that they felt the board was going to use the information to mandate vaccines, something members tried to squash.

“We are not mandating vaccines or voting on or pushing laws to mandate vaccines. I don’t know where that came from today,” board member Tiffany Tilley said.

Bagdasarian said that Michigan had a “pretty liberal allowance” regarding vaccination waivers, which were allowed for religious, medical and personal reasons.

She said the pre-pandemic rate was between 74–75% for complete vaccinations, which include shots for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, bacterial meningitis, hepatitis B, chickenpox, and bacterial pneumonia.

The misinformation that many of the public commenters espoused was evident of where the mistrust of vaccinations stemmed, with many citing internet stories and Centers for Disease Control Vaccine advisors under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. changing on Dec. 5 the recommendations of the hepatitis B shot for newborns.

The public comment pointed to the erosion of public trust in institutions and governments.

Board President Pamela Pugh said they had passed a resolution affirming the school vaccination documentation and exemption process in September.

She went after the decision of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after the board reversed the 40-year-old decision.

“This decision was political, not scientific,” Pugh said.

Pugh said she nearly died of liver and kidney failure when she was 19.

“I know what liver disease can do to a young body. Removing proven protections from newborns endangers children and undermines trust in public health,” she said.

She said the board couldn’t ignore Bagdasarian’s report on the declining vaccination rates.

“Michigan’s children deserve evidence-based public health protections. When we weaken or politicize those protections, we put infants and families at risk,” Pugh said.