NOTE: This petition is edited only in this section before the intro/open (and nothing else has been edited) to let everyone know that the 2026 petition can be found at: https://www.change.org/KeepVaxStateCodeWV, so please click that link and sign the updated petition for the 2026 year and WV legislative session. Thank you for all your support, West Virginia! 

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Dear Honorable West Virginia Legislators,

We are your fellow West Virginia parents, grandparents, caregivers, neighbors, and community members. As vaccine-preventable diseases reemerge across the country, we are concerned for the health and safety of our kids and communities.

We ask that you do not change our existing policy for school immunization requirements for school entry in West Virginia.  

We are coming together to encourage you to help keep our state’s school immunization policy the way it is: leading the nation in protecting kids and communities from deadly yet preventable diseases. Changing our state’s essential school immunization requirements would put our children, and subsequently our communities, at risk of preventable diseases like measles, polio, and pertussis. 

Strong school immunization policies, like the nationally recognized leading policy we have in West Virginia, help keep our state’s immunization rates high. Keeping immunization rates high works toward building a society free of unnecessary disease and death.

Maintaining high immunization rates isn't only about protecting our kids—it's also about safeguarding our entire community, even those who are too young to be vaccinated or who have certain medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to disease. There are specific thresholds we need to meet to keep everyone safe. For instance, a 95% immunization rate against measles helps prevent its spread to both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. When we fall short of these targets, we risk outbreaks that affect us all, like the one in Washington state that kept over 800 children out of school and daycare for weeks.

We're proud of our state's strong record when it comes to childhood immunizations, especially in the face of recent challenges in neighboring states and across the nation. Our state’s school immunization requirements have demonstrated their effectiveness: when there was a measles case in Monongalia County in Spring 2024, this highly contagious disease did not spread any further than the single individual who contracted it overseas. There are few states, if any, that can make that claim about their measles cases and outbreaks. Yet, West Virginia’s cases did not spread beyond the infected individual because of our high measles vaccination rates, a credit to our school immunization policies.

And let's not forget about the broader impact on our state—on our jobs, our economy, and even our tourism. Businesses already weigh the health of our workforce very heavily when considering whether to locate in our state. Our people need to be at work, and businesses need their employees to stay afloat – that is all at risk when employees are sick or caring for sick kids.

The effects of school immunization policy extend far beyond schools and kids. Changing our school immunization policy reduces our ability to build a society free of preventable disease and death. Lower rates of immunization can negatively affect our elderly, our teachers, pregnant women, our healthcare workers, and our hospitals. Preventable diseases harm and strain our communities.

By maintaining our nation-leading school immunization policy, we're not just standing up for public health; we're showing our commitment to keeping our communities strong and resilient.

For the above reasons and many more, we ask that you do not change our existing school immunization requirements.  

Thank you for your service, 

Your Community Members