How Your School Could Become the Next Tinderbox for Measles
Hot spots for measles are scattered across the U.S., in areas rich or poor, in red states or blue.
SEATTLEThe Waldorf School in this city is part of a fast-growing global chain of private schools with a holistic curriculum emphasizing freedom and individuality.
It is also, in the view of public health officials, a tinderbox for illnesses like measles.
Like Waldorf parents in other states, Seattle’s Waldorf parents tend to be well-educated, mostly liberal, and able to afford tuition that tops out at $22,800 a year. Many are also hesitant to vaccinate their children against childhood diseases. This thinking resonates so strongly that when the measles outbreak began at Disneyland late last year, 28 percent of the Seattle school’s students had not been inoculated against it.
In other words, 83 kids at Waldorf were at risk of catching measles. That
