Wisconsin School Vaccination Rates: an interactive map

The Washington Post recently published an interactive article which shared kindergarten immunization data collected from public schools in 34 states. The data shows plunging vaccine rates across the country.

I was shocked by how low some of the numbers were, and I wanted to understand how they compared to school numbers as a whole. It’s possible than some kindergartners haven’t yet received all of the vaccination they will receive.

For example, Neeskara Elementary had an MMR vaccination rate of 12% and an overall compliance rate of 7%. Fortunately, the schoolwide numbers for Neeskara, according to WI DHS, are an MMR rate of 60% and an overall rate of 50%. Given that herd immunity against measles requires “about 95% of a population to be vaccinated,” Neeskara is still disturbingly low, but there is a world of difference between 7% and 60%. Most of the children attending Neeskara have received this vaccine–just not most kindergartners at the beginning of the year.

At MacDowell Montessori, kindergartners reported an MMR rate of 26% and an overall rate of 26%. The schoolwide numbers are 92% for MMR and 62% overall. Likewise, kindergartners at Hayes Bilingual School were at 33% for MMR and 27% overall. The schoolwide numbers are 76% MMR and 61% overall.

More details from WI DHS

Besides listing the MMR and overall vaccine compliance rates for each school, the WI DHS data also provides information about why students aren’t vaccine compliant. In most Milwaukee schools with low vaccination rates, the cause isn’t that parents have filled out vaccine waivers. According to the DHS statistics, it’s more common for students who are out-of-compliance to be classified as “in process,” “behind schedule,” or just “no record” rather than having explicitly opted-out of vaccinations by completing a waiver.

At Neeskara, for example, 20% are “behind schedule” and 28% have “no record.” Scarcely any students actually have a vaccine waiver on file. Similarly, Riverside High School has truly dismal 12% vaccine compliance rate. Eighty percent of its students are “behind schedule” and 7% are “no record.” Few, if any, have waived vaccine requirements.

Schools where many students have waived vaccines are uncommon, but they do exist. At Tamarack Waldorf, on Milwaukee’s East Side, 67% of students have met minimum vaccination requirements. Sixteen percent have “waived all vaccines” and 24% have completed a “personal conviction waiver.” The distinction between these classifications is unclear to me. So is the distinction between students who are listed as “in progress” vs. “behind schedule.”

In general, the quality of the school-level data provided by WI DHS raises as many questions as it answers. At North Division, for instance, 65% of students were classified as “met minimum requirements” in 2024, with just 5% having “no record.” The next year, in 2025, fewer than 5% “met minimum requirements” and 80% had “no record.” Absent some extraordinary turnover over students between those two years, I struggle to imagine how this could be possible. More likely: the data was reported incorrectly in one or both of the years.

Many schools also fail to submit their reports every year. In 2025, 377 schools statewide (13% of the total) failed to submit a report. But 197 of those schools had submitted a report the previous year, in 2024.

The current self-reported school vaccination data collected by WI DHS is incomplete and inconsistent where available. The failure to report this data accurately (or at all) poses real challenges to public health efforts. A health department might want to plan its vaccine outreach campaigns around those schools where children are unvaccinated, not because their parents have opted them out of immunizations, but simply because those children are apparently not receiving medical care. Better data would improve this kind of targeting.

I’ve built an interactive map showing the available data for every school in the state. Click the image below to open it. Mousing over each school will reveal its name and 2025 overall vaccine compliance rate. Click the school to display a table showing more detailed vaccine statistics for each year from 2022 through 2025. If the school failed to submit a report in any of those years, all values for the year will be NA.

Updated 2/25 to correctly identify that the Washington Post story uses kindergarten vaccination rates, not schoolwide rates.

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Milwaukee’s Baby Bust Hit New Lows in 2025

The fewest babies on record were born to Milwaukee mothers in 2025, according to preliminary vital statistics records.

As of January 5th, the state’s vital statistics database shows 7,343 Milwaukee births in 2025. Based on the reporting pattern in previous years, I estimate that the total number of 2025 births will stand at about 7,386 after the last records trickle in.[i]

This is a 5.0% decline from 2024, when 7,774 babies were born to Milwaukee moms. It is a 15.0% decline since 2020 and a 28.7% decline since 2010.

line graph showing the number of babies born to Milwaukee mothers, 1990 to 2025

Births are only one component of population puzzle. Each year, people of all ages move both in and out of Milwaukee. But the number of births is the first ingredient of our future population, and the number of babies born has ripple effects in every following year. For example, in a response (at least partly) to declining demand, one large Milwaukee hospital stopped delivering babies altogether in 2022.

The drop in births throughout the 2010s also explains why Milwaukee’s population loss in the 2020 census was so surprising. The 2020 census came in well below what projections based on administrative data predicted. Those projections used birth and death records collected at the county level, and they estimated the county’s overall population accurately. The problem was that the Census Bureau model allocated births to each municipality based on patterns from the 2010 census, when, in fact, the share of babies born in the suburbs grew, relative to the city: a fact independently confirmed by both the 2020 census and local vital statistics.[ii]

Birth counts quickly affect school enrollments. Milwaukee’s births actually remained steady—even growing a bit—between the late 1990s and the late 2000s. This had a stabilizing effect on school enrollments, benefiting each sector of the city’s fragmented school system. There were actually more first graders attending a Milwaukee school in the 2014-15 school year than in 2005-06.

Then enrollment began to fall. The Great Recession, accompanied by an extreme mortgage foreclosure crisis in Milwaukee, coincided with a sharp drop in births. Newborn counts fell from 11,457 in 2007 to 9,213 in 2018. By 2023-24, there were 1,500 fewer first graders attending a Milwaukee school than in 2014-15.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, births dropped by 14.5% from 2019 to 2022. This was nearly three times the statewide decline of 5.1% over this period, so the drop in Milwaukee likely reflects prospective parents leaving the city in addition to couples putting off having a kid. Supporting this, census data shows a net outflow of 15,800 people leaving Milwaukee in the year ending July 1, 2021. Things improved after that, and net migration actually turned slightly positive in the year ending July 1, 2024, when the city gained about 500 residents in this way.

Mirroring this net migration pattern, births fell most sharply in the calendar years 2020 and 2021, before remaining more stable in 2023 and 2024. The renewed sharp drop in 2025 may indicate a resumption of negative net migration for the city or changes to the age profile and childbearing preferences of existing residents. Some hints might be gleaned from the map of where births have fallen in Milwaukee.

These three maps show, from left to right, the total number of babies born in each City of Milwaukee zip code during 2025, the change from 2024 to 2025, and the change from 2019 to 2025.

maps showing the number of babies born in each zip code and comparing this with 2024 and 2019.

The cumulative effect of Milwaukee’s years-long run of declining births is large. As we begin 2026, 39,210 babies were born in Milwaukee over the past 5 years. At the beginning of 2020, that number was 46,345. Here are some final thoughts:

  • There is no sign that Milwaukee’s baby bust has bottomed out. Two years ago, I thought it might have, but the latest data points toward continued declines of several hundred babies each year.
  • Schools across all sectors will face declining enrollment for the foreseeable future, with each cohort likely being smaller than the last.
  • While it is true that fertility rates are declining nearly everywhere, I think the rapidity (and location) of Milwaukee’s baby bust points to out-migration of prospective parents as a large factor. Much of this could be solved if more young couples felt Milwaukee was a good place to raise a family. In general, in Milwaukee’s healthiest and safest neighborhoods, the baby bust is either small or not happening at all.

[i] In the last couple years, a little over half of one percent of birth records were still outstanding by the following January 5th.

[ii] The Census Bureau Population Estimates Program uses vital statistics and modeled migration data to estimate county-level population. It then allocated the county-level population into municipalities based on the number of housing units in each (another tracked metric) and the average household size in the previous decennial census. In Milwaukee, the city’s average household size actually fell from 2.5 in 2010 to 2.39 in 2020, while in the Milwaukee County suburbs, the average household size stayed about the same.

Continue ReadingMilwaukee’s Baby Bust Hit New Lows in 2025

The Odds of Jury Duty

How likely am I to be called for jury duty? If called, how likely am I to actually be seated for a trial? Do jurors represent a true cross-section of the population? I have wondered about all these questions, and, recently, I came across a report from Milwaukee County Circuit Court making it possible to answer them.

I’ll cut to the chase. If you live in Milwaukee County, your annual odds of receiving a summons for jury duty are either 0 or 1-in-4, depending on your situation. But, assuming you are eligible to be a juror, your odds of actually becoming one are roughly 1-in-100. And while the pool from which jurors are summoned closely matches the demographics of Milwaukee County as a whole, the people who actually show up for jury duty are not so representative.

Odds of Jury Service, from Initial Summons to Sworn Juror

sankey diagram showing the outcomes of those summoned for jury duty in Milwaukee County Circuit Court during 2024

To calculate the odds of receiving a juror summons, we must first subtract the number of people who completed jury duty in the past four years because, in Milwaukee, those people are exempt from service. Last year, the court issued 127,057 summonses, but only 46,199 (36%) of them resulted in someone completing jury duty. Assuming these numbers remain constant, in any given year, about 127,000 summonses will be issued to a pool of about 500,000 people. In other words, if you’re eligible for jury duty, you have a 25% chance of receiving a summons each year. Once you’ve served, you won’t get another summons for at least 4 years.

Receiving a summons is no strong indication that you’ll wind up serving. Of the 127,000 summons issued in 2024, only about 18,000 resulted in somebody actually having to appear for jury duty. In 28,000 cases, the juror was available but their service was cancelled. In the remaining cases, the juror was ineligible or unavailable to serve, the most common reasons being postponement of service (29,300) or non-response (26,200).

If you’re part of the 14% of people receiving a jury summons who actually find themselves sitting in the waiting room at the Courthouse, the odds are good you’ll be sent to a courtroom for voir dire (the legal term for actual jury selection). In 2024, 16,927 people were sent to one of 524 voir dires (it’s possible some people participated in more than one voir dire proceeding). Of those, 72% were questioned and 36% were chosen to be a sworn juror.

To sum it all up, if you haven’t had jury duty for four years, there is about a 25% chance you’ll get a summons next year. If you do get a summons, there is a roughly 36% chance you’ll become eligible and available to serve, a 14% chance you’ll actually have to visit the courthouse, and a 5% chance you’ll be placed on a jury.

Jury Pool Demographics

Of course, those probabilities assume each person has an equal likelihood of selection at each stage of the process. This assumption is basically true in the initial draw of people receiving a jury summons, but it is distinctly not true in the second stage, self-response.

Following state law, the Milwaukee Circuit Court draws its jury pool from a list of state ID card holders provided by WisDOT. This is a good system. As I’ve written, nearly all Wisconsin adults have one of these cards.[i] Indeed, Milwaukee County’s master jury list included about 682,000 names in 2024, which was equal to 97% of the county’s estimated adult population of 701,000.

The demographics of the jury master list are about the same as the county’s, as shown in the table below. There are some differences by race, but, as I understand it, these are mostly the consequence of differences between how the Census Bureau and WisDOT measure race and ethnicity.

table comparing demographics of the population with the juror pool

The big discrepancies occur among the 21% of people who receive a jury summons but don’t respond. In 2024, the rate of non-response was 12% for white, 19% for Asian, 30% for Hispanic, 39% for other, and 44% for Black summons recipients. A much smaller number, about 6% of those receiving a summons, were disqualified from service. Asians and Hispanics were the most likely to be disqualified at 32% and 19%, respectively. This likely reflects language barriers. Wisconsin law requires jurors to be fluent English speakers. Prospective white and Black jurors were disqualified at rates of 6% and 3%, respectively.

Given these statistics, efforts to improve the demographic representativeness of Milwaukee’s juries should focus on the reasons why some people don’t respond to their jury summons in the first place. The summons process itself is demonstrably fair.

[i] My analysis compared DOA records with census estimates derived from vital statistics. I estimated that the share of the adult population with a state-issued ID card lies somewhere between 94% and 100%. Those less likely to have an ID include college students, recent movers from out-of-state, 18 and 19 year olds,  and poor people. All else being equal, Black and Asian Wisconsinites are more likely to have an ID than white ones.

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