With the risk of infection rising, parents and young adults are facing agonizing choices about being out in public as school starts back up. As students head back to school, parents have all the usual worries about their kids, like remembering to pack lunch and making it to the bus stop on time. But parents of immunocompromised kids have a new one: How to deal with the resurgence of measles . Cases of the highly transmissible disease have reached a 35-year high in the US, with nearly 3,000 confirmed infections in 2026 so far. The first two measles-related deaths of the year were recorded in Pennsylvania, right as the school year is getting going. With vaccination rates dropping across the country, parents of kids who aren't able to get vaccinated or don't mount a strong enough immune response due to weakened immune systems are weighing whether it's safe enough to go to school.

Back in sixth grade, I was a robot. Or at least, that's what I told anyone who asked--in reality, my 11-year-old self was completely human. In 2018, I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer that meant nine months of chemotherapy and too many surgeries to count. It was a year punctuated with hospital visits, needle pokes, and days when I felt too nauseated to even look at a plate of food. And yet, my primary concern was that in my immunocompromised state, I was no longer able to attend school.