For 36 years, Lake Champlain Waldorf School has provided students with a loving, engaging learning environment. Our faculty members educate the whole child and offer parent education evenings that include connection, community, and child development resources. Part of our decades-long legacy of success has to do with a strong partnership with parents—one that encourages them to be well informed and to make thoughtful decisions about their children’s education, school environment, and health.
Lake Champlain Waldorf School has never been anti-vaccine, nor supported anti-vaccination movements. Neither have we been explicitly pro-vaccine, or supported pro-vaccine movements. However, recent measles outbreaks and the global COVID-19 pandemic have prompted us to evaluate our position and practices, and to affirm our commitment to public health.
• We acknowledge our responsibility as a school to respect and act on current understandings within the field of public health. Our school policy, practice, and protective measures will rely primarily on information from the Vermont Department of Health, the National Association of School Nurses, and the American Association of Pediatricians. While we remain informed of other research and scientific perspectives, these are the medical authorities to which we will defer when information conflicts.
• We commit to communicating with current parents regularly about the role that all schools play in supporting the public health of our community.
• We commit to community-wide education about childhood vaccinations and the diseases they are designed to prevent, and an ongoing discussion about our responsibilities as a school community.
• We commit to respecting the legal rights of Vermont families to make informed decisions about childhood vaccinations in consultation with their family doctors and their religious leaders.
• We commit to increasing our vaccine compliance rates to protect the public health of our community, with particular awareness of the needs of our most medically vulnerable.
Though the details of the future are unknowable, we acknowledge that the demands of public health will continue to shape our personal choices and freedoms. With steadfastness and resolve, we take up our role in support of public health for our community and our world.