None of this surprises me. The schools with the lowest MMR rates for kindergarteners in DC are

(1) wealthy privates with a lot of very progressive parents as well as a lot of foreign families -- many countries have much lower vaccination rates than the US and lower overall trust in public health authorities. WIS, for instance, is just above 60%. Not surprised.

(2) Montessori and hippie dippy public and private schools. The public ones have higher vaccination rates. This makes sense because public school parents tend to be more rule following and public schools have more several for pushing families to vaccinate. But CHML, for instance, still has one of the lower vaccination rates for publics in Ward 6.

(3) Very poor schools, where kids are likely not being vaccinated either out of ignorance or because they aren't getting proper healthcare at all. But even these have higher rates of vaccination than the privates because most poor families will vaccinate their kids if a trusted authority figure (like a nurse who is of their same race and general background who speaks to them respectfully) explains why they should do it and why they should trust them. There will likely always be around 20% in these schools who still won't, so much distrust of authority and for good reason. But you can actually boost rates at these schools a lot.

Wow. This data is scary. My local public only has a 92% vaccination rate.

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have a gift link for the article?

I tried but DCUM doesn't like my link, not sure why.

It's actually not a great article, IMO. WaPo seems to spend a lot of time reporting on other places (in this case, Minnesota) and then the headline makes it look local but there's not much local information.

Anyone have a gift link for the article?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a GDS parent, I'm embarrassed and furious about its low rate. I want to understand from the administration why it's so low.

I’m shocked that you’re shocked.

Progressives and religious folks are the people who don’t vaccinate. Is this new news to you?

Used to be that way but not so much anymore. Crunchy anti vaxers are firmly MAGA/MAHA now.

This switch is one of the weirder things that has happened in modern America.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a GDS parent, I'm embarrassed and furious about its low rate. I want to understand from the administration why it's so low.

Isn’t that what you chose? It’s a private school. You didn’t want this and the other rules public has to follow.

Private schools in fact do need to follow vaccine rules. I know the GDS nurse cares about getting the medical forms because when we've been late, she emails us to remind us. So I'm surprised that they are seemingly so lax with exemptions.

Anonymous wrote:As a GDS parent, I'm embarrassed and furious about its low rate. I want to understand from the administration why it's so low.

Isn’t that what you chose? It’s a private school. You didn’t want this and the other rules public has to follow.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a GDS parent, I'm embarrassed and furious about its low rate. I want to understand from the administration why it's so low.

I’m shocked that you’re shocked.

Progressives and religious folks are the people who don’t vaccinate. Is this new news to you?

Used to be that way but not so much anymore. Crunchy anti vaxers are firmly MAGA/MAHA now.

Anonymous wrote:As a GDS parent, I'm embarrassed and furious about its low rate. I want to understand from the administration why it's so low.

I’m shocked that you’re shocked.

Progressives and religious folks are the people who don’t vaccinate. Is this new news to you?

As a GDS parent, I'm embarrassed and furious about its low rate. I want to understand from the administration why it's so low.

Anonymous wrote:Oh just kindergardeners makes more sense.

…still not loving some of these numbers though, including at our school. Reaching out to school nurse when we’re back. Ugh.

And then what? What will the nurse tell you that will change your behavior?

Oh just kindergardeners makes more sense.

…still not loving some of these numbers though, including at our school. Reaching out to school nurse when we’re back. Ugh.

In the map, I believe the numbers are just kindergarteners. So x school has 23 kindergarteners and 100% of them got the MMR shot.

I can't tell if they're pulling a specific year or averaging.

It's always been the case that privates had lower vaccination rates than publics. Used to be schools that skewed progressive, probably now schools that skew religious due to the way that anti-vaccination stances switched sides politically in the past decade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2025/measles-vaccine-schools-outbreaks-public-health/

Can this be right? Some of the private schools have weirdly low numbers of students…but also weirdly low vaccination rates, which is concerning.