Homeschooling Trends Before and After the New York State Repeal of Nonmedical Vaccination Exemptions

ImportanceEvaluation of New York State (NYS) Senate Bill 2994A repealing school-entry nonmedical vaccine exemption options suggests that the law was effective to increase school vaccine coverage; however, the laws impact on homeschooling has not been examined. ObjectiveTo evaluate the impact of NYS Senate Bill 2994A on homeschooling prevalence. Design, Setting, and ParticipantsIn this population-based cohort study with interrupted time-series analyses, we estimated changes in homeschooling prevalence following NYS Senate Bill 2994A implementation. The study cohort comprised school districts that submitted annual student enrollment and homeschooling reports for all school years during the study period, 2014-15 through 2019-20. Analyses were conducted in January 2025. ExposureNYS Senate Bill 2994A went into effect in June 2019. Because legislative compliance was not evaluated for most students until the following school year, we considered the 2019-20 school year as the laws effective date. Main Outcomes and MeasuresWe calculated homeschooling prevalence as the number of homeschooling students divided by the total number of students, multiplied by 100. We estimated homeschooling prevalence differences (PD) comparing the time periods before (referent) and after NYS Senate Bill 2994A. Crude and adjusted PDs accounting for longitudinal homeschooling trends were estimated at the population-level, district-level, and county-level. Due to data limitations, PDs for New York City (NYC) were estimated only at the population-level. ResultsAmong 685 (99.3%) NYS school districts, the repeal of nonmedical vaccine exemptions was associated with an overall increase in homeschooling prevalence of 0.1% (95% CI: 0.1%-0.1%) among NYC students and 0.3% (95% CI: 0.2%-0.3%) among students outside of NYC, after adjustment for longitudinal trends. At the district-level, the law was associated with an average 0.4% (95% CI: 0.3%-0.5%) increase in homeschooling prevalence among non-NYC schools. Spatial variation in crude homeschooling PDs was observed in county-level estimates (range: -0.3% to 1.5%; interquartile range: 0.2% to 0.5%). Conclusion and RelevanceWe found evidence that NYS Senate Bill 2994A was associated with small, but significant increases in homeschooling prevalence. These results suggest that a small number of un(der)vaccinated students may have disenrolled from traditional "brick-and-mortar" schools to avoid compliance with the law.