A gap in the Texas Department of State Health Services’ July 1, 2026, school vaccination release leaves out current district-level figures for Fort Worth ISD, the city’s largest school district. The omission means the public report does not show Fort Worth’s results, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
What happened to the district’s figures
FWISD entered the requested immunization information, but did not complete its final electronic submission. DSHS therefore had the district’s data on file without including the figures in the public release, the Star-Telegram reported. DSHS later requested an audit of randomly selected Fort Worth campuses; FWISD Health Services said it completed and submitted that audit, according to the same report.
People seeking the missing figures can submit a public-information request. FWISD has posted vaccination data from prior years online, but current district-level results are not available in the latest state dataset, according to district information cited by the Star-Telegram.
How to read the available county numbers
What the figures do — and do not — show
The state release also cannot answer whether vaccination coverage or exemption rates have changed across all of Texas. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, its school coverage figures exclude children attending home schools and therefore do not represent vaccination rates for the entire state or its public health regions. For families who need vaccines or are checking records, Tarrant County Public Health says its immunization services are available to adults and to children covered by Medicaid or CHIP, as well as underinsured or uninsured residents. The department asks patients to bring their vaccination records, according to Tarrant County Public Health.
Tarrant County’s published totals cannot fill that gap because Fort Worth ISD is excluded. Nearly 93% of county kindergartners received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine during the 2025–26 school year, compared with nearly 94% the year before. Almost 7% claimed a conscientious exemption to at least one vaccine, up from about 3% five years earlier, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Those percentages describe an aggregate and do not reveal how vaccination levels vary among individual schools. Texas law requires districts to report vaccination information at the district level, while legislation that would have required public campus-level reporting failed amid concerns about privacy and potential harassment, according to Chalkbeat. During an outbreak, however, public-health officials can obtain campus-level information.
Why the missing release matters
Texas recorded more than 750 measles cases during a 2025 outbreak, along with at least 99 hospitalizations and the deaths of two children, according to the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute. Nearly 91% of those hospitalized were minors, and the reviewed patients were either unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.
Texas guidance requires children to receive core vaccines before attending school. Families pursuing a conscientious exemption must follow the state’s applicable process. Without Fort Worth’s current public figures, parents and health researchers have less information for evaluating vaccination levels in the district. The omission from the release does not mean the district’s records are unavailable to DSHS or that students are not monitored during a public-health response.
