Palm Beach County Schools to push back on plan to roll back vaccine requirements
CBS 12 | By Tiffany Rizzo | September 15th 2025
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. (CBS12) — The Palm Beach County School Board just added opposing vaccine rollbacks to its list of proposed legislative priorities.
Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said parents should decide… not the state, but Delray Beach Pediatrician, Dr. Hila Beckerman said its about protecting public health and urges families to keep children up to date on their shots.
“For other diseases, such as Mumps, Measles, Rubella, diseases that we know, Polio, why would you want to risk getting paralyzed? That risk does not outweigh the safety of the vaccines. So once you weigh the risks and benefits of vaccines, you’ll see that the risks do not outweigh the benefits. The benefits of vaccines are their safety profile. They’ve been around for 40, 50 years. So we already know that vaccines are safe, vaccines are effective, and vaccines save lives,” Dr. Beckerman said.
The Palm Beach County School Board just added opposing vaccine rollbacks to its list of proposed legislative priorities.
Palm Beach County School Board members agree, saying vaccines are crucial to keeping students healthy. They voiced that concern during a special workshop and budget meeting on Wednesday, even adding a request to formally oppose the state’s proposed changes.
“This is crucially important for our school system,” District 4 Board Member Erica Whitfield said.
“Childhood vaccines are critical for the health and safety of all of our students, teachers and the broader community. And these vaccines protect children from dangerous diseases like Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Polio, and they have been proven to be safe,” District 3 Board Chair Karen Brill said.
This all comes just a week after Governor DeSantis and Surgeon General Ladapo called for an end to school vaccine requirements.
If that happens, Florida would be the first state in the country to roll them back.
Here’s where it stands now: some vaccines, like Measles, Polio and MMR, are written into state law. Only lawmakers can remove those. Others, like Hepatitis B and Chickenpox, can be dropped through rule changes already underway.
The health department filed that rule on September 3rd and it would take effect about 90 days later, in early December.
“So it makes a system that’s less organized, it drops the vaccination rates in the community, and it leaves everyone susceptible,” Dr. Beckerman said.
