EDITORIAL:Columbia Borough School District offers lessons about how to ensure schoolkids get vaccinated

May 16-THE ISSUE

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.

Three new cases of measles were announced in Lancaster County earlier this month.

We had hoped we could put aside concern about measles, after a February outbreak in the county was confined to eight cases.

The disease 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.

This is a tragedy.

As Drs. Pia Fenimore and Joan Thode, local pediatricians, wrote in a series of LNP - LancasterOnline columns about childhood immunization, measles "is the most contagious virus on Earth" and "can be a dangerous disease in the short and long terms." The disease induces " 'immune amnesia,' causing the immune cells' familiarity with all of the viruses and illnesses your body has ever encountered to vanish. This new naivety of your immune system leaves you much more susceptible to future pathogens."

This is just one reason we've repeatedly implored parents to ensure their children get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine as recommended by pediatricians.

And it's one reason why we believe the Pennsylvania Legislature should eliminate the too easily obtainable philosophical and religious exemptions that allow far too many Lancaster County parents to send their kids to school without the safe and effective vaccinations that would protect them and those around them.

It is incredibly frustrating watching the reemergence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles. This resurgence has been fueled by an anti-vaccination movement that has persuaded parents to heed charlatans and quacks instead of highly skilled physicians who spent years training in pediatric medicine.

As LNP - LancasterOnline's Anne Garber reported, the average MMR vaccination rate among Lancaster County homeschooled students was 49%, according to 2024-25 school year data, the most recently available.

That is only slightly more than half the rate needed to achieve herd (or community) immunity, which occurs in a population when enough people are protected from an infectious disease to keep it from spreading easily.

Among public school students, Lancaster County had a 95% MMR vaccination rate overall.

But, remarkably, Columbia Borough School District's seventh and 12th graders exceeded even that threshold.

And we believe other school communities should heed Columbia's lessons.

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."

In 2017, Columbia Borough School District officials partnered with a community health provider to make vaccines easy to access and free, Hollister said.

This proved to be critical.

"As much as we talk about changing people's mindset or changing their behavior, we know that with any health behavior, if you make the healthy choice available and easier to access, people are just more likely to do it," Dr. Lori Handy, an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and associate director of CHOP's Vaccine Education Center, told this newspaper.

To convey the importance of vaccination, the school district "communicated in all ways - letters, phone calls, emails," Hollister recalled. "Teachers got involved. And ... because of the tight community, everyone knows everyone and so ... that helped pass the word around."

He said it "was really about communication, convenience and just the community."

Communication, convenience, community. That is a formula that any school district should be able to replicate.

The Columbia Borough School District hasn't rested on its laurels. In 2024, nonprofit healthcare provider Union Community Care began offering school-based health care in the district to provide preventive care, including immunizations, to students and staff.

"Everything in a school-based health center is a partnership with the school administration and school staff," Alisa Maria Jones, president and CEO of Union Community Care, told LNP - LancasterOnline. "It starts with the administration giving information to parents about the school-based health center" in multiple ways.

"In Columbia School District, we have early and consistent engagement with the school district on focusing on kindergarten entry requirements (which includes immunizations) and then reinforcing key transition years, such as seventh and 12th grade," Jones noted. "And it is both a proactive outreach, and then there is a reactive component. So if there are students who are not meeting the requirement for immunization and don't have documentation, then they would be prioritized to get services at the health center, and we would reach out reactively."

Family finances aren't an obstacle. The state Department of Health's Vaccines for Children Program offers vaccines at no charge to children who do not have health insurance.

As LNP - LancasterOnline reported, Columbia's seventh and 12th graders were not the only groups in the county to achieve 100% MMR vaccination rates.

Here's who else made the honor roll:

- Kindergartners at Eshleman Elementary School in the Penn Manor School District.

- In the School District of Lancaster, seventh graders at Jackson Middle School and at Martin School; and 12th graders at Phoenix Academy.

- Seventh graders at Landisville Middle School in the Hempfield School District.

- And seventh and 12th graders at La Academia Partnership Charter School.

We hope that schools - having experienced the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic - are vigorously encouraging vaccination. This shouldn't be a political issue. Encouraging parents to ensure their kids remain healthy shouldn't be a controversial position for educators to take.

As LNP - LancasterOnline reporting revealed, the state doesn't enforce vaccination compliance, leaving it to schools to ensure that kids are either immunized or have filed exemptions.

In the 2024-25 academic year, Solanco High School had 18 students in the 12th grade who were listed as attending school without vaccinations or exemptions. That was the highest number of noncompliant students in Lancaster County - a regrettable distinction.

Solanco administrators might find in the Columbia Borough School District some ideas for remedying that.

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.