The Waldorf School is home to one cluster among many. The diversity in these tinderboxes is clearly reflected in Washington State, which in 2008 had the highest rate of vaccine exemptions in the country. A single common thread unites them: reluctance to vaccinate. These clusters cross all dividing lines: socioeconomic classes, education levels, and political and religious views. Clusters of like-minded people disinclined to vaccinate their kids are scattered throughout every state that allows vaccine exemptions-whether in the megalopolises of California or in the rural outreaches of North Dakota. But more than anything, it revealed how widespread tinderboxes like Waldorf have become as the anti-vax movement gained momentum in the 15 years since measles was declared eliminated in the United States. The Disney outbreak laid bare an ugly divisiveness over childhood vaccines.

“What keeps me awake at night?” says Tracy Bennett, who heads Seattle’s Waldorf school. That is the kind of number that, as the Disney outbreak spread to Washington State, put Waldorf on speed-dial at the Seattle and King County Public Health Department. In other words, 83 kids at Waldorf were at risk of catching measles. 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. Many are also hesitant to vaccinate their children against childhood diseases. 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.

It is also, in the view of public health officials, a tinderbox for illnesses like measles. 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.

Tinderbox waldorf maryland