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Vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella vary among Lancaster County students, but one local school district is setting the standard: Columbia Borough School District. Pennsylvania requires schoolchildren to be vaccinated against tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis B and bacterial meningitis, but exemptions are available.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. But thanks to dangerous and misguided anti-vaccination forces, measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases are making a comeback.
While 94% of the kindergartners at Park Elementary School, Columbia’s sole elementary school, were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella for the 2024-25 school year, 100% of Columbia seventh and 12th graders had received both doses of the MMR vaccine.
One-hundred percent.
In discussing this achievement, former Columbia Superintendent Bob Hollister pointed to the tight-knit nature of the Columbia Borough School District community.
The day you move into Columbia, he observed to LNP | LancasterOnline, “you’re a Columbian. So they do … look out for one another.” This has led to a “sort of a community incentive to keep everyone healthy.”
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