The county of Santa Barbara may require county jails to ask new inmates about vaccination status as part of its response to a report by the Santa Barbara County Grand Jury that raised concern about the spread of infectious diseases.

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will meet on Tuesday in Santa Barbara during its regular weekly meeting, where it is scheduled to discuss the report and how to respond to recommendations on how it can better monitor vaccination levels among adults and homeschooled children.

In the report, the grand jury claims that vaccination levels across the country have fallen, raising alarm about the risks of measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, and other preventable diseases.  

“Over past decades, there has been increasing public discourse about the potential risks of vaccines, which may help to explain why vaccination rates have decreased across the United States,” the report said.

The report includes a series of recommendations from the Grand Jury that the county can choose to implement or decline if it has valid reasons. One of the recommendations for the county is to improve its prisoner intake program at its jails.

The Grand Jury expressed concern that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office was not recording vaccination rates among minors and adults in custody at its detention facilities.

The Grand Jury warned that this practice could put inmates at risk of infectious disease. The county acknowledged that the vaccinations are not recorded, but disagreed with the idea that inmates could be at risk since they are screened upon arrival at the jail.

The county did agree with recommendations that the intake process should include questions about childhood vaccines and reported that the Sheriff’s Office will implement the questions by Dec. 1, 2025.  

The report also raised concerns about the county’s vaccination rate among its K-12 student population.

According to the report, which was released in May, Santa Barbara County has one of the highest levels of vaccinations for students in the state of California. The vaccination rate for kids in the county is above 95%, which is above the state average.

However, the jury also expressed concern that the county does not have any records for vaccinations among kids who are homeschooled, and the vaccination rate is unknown. According to the report, 8.7% of kids are currently homeschooled in California, and it says that number is expected to rise.

In an early response to the Grand Jury, the board acknowledged that it does not track the vaccination rate of homeschool children, but said this is “consistent across California.” Parents who homeschool their kids are not required to report their vaccination histories.

The Grand Jury also recommended that the county require its County Health Department to study and estimate vaccination levels among homeschool kids. The county pushed back against this recommendation, saying there is no method to do so reliably.

The county did estimate how much homeschool kids could affect herd immunity by assuming none of them are vaccinated. It found that by assuming all homeschoolers were unvaccinated, the overall vaccination rate for kids between 5 to 17 dropped from 97% to 93%.

“Herd immunity targets range between 90 to 95%, thus even under this scenario, the County is still within the herd immunity target,” the county response said.

On the Grand Jury’s claims that the county does not track adult vaccination rates, the county partially agreed with the finding. However, the county stated that due to the California Immunization Registry (CAIR), which began mandating data entry of all vaccines since January 2023, it will be able to track vaccination levels as kids become adults.

The county also disagreed with the Grand Jury report on the topic of requiring the health department to study the level of childhood vaccination among adults, saying there is no way for the county to do so. The county response said it would require adults to share childhood vaccination records, but it cannot confirm if most adults have those available.

The Board will discuss the report’s findings and recommendations more in-depth during its meeting and expand on how to respond to the report.

The Board of Supervisors meeting will be held on Tuesday, starting at 9 a.m. in the County Administration Building located at 105 E. Anapamu St. The meeting can be viewed live or livestreamed. To see the meeting agenda and other details, click here.