This story first appeared in the Feb. 11, 2015 edition of WW.

Shining Star Waldorf School doesn’t look like a potential incubator for an outbreak of disease.

The small private school holds elementary and middle-school classes in a church basement in the tony Irvington neighborhood. It offers outdoor school each Thursday at park lands like Elk Rock Island and Kelley Point Park. Last month, Shining Star celebrated its annual “festival of the bees”—a fundraiser selling beeswax and honey.

Shining Star is also the Portland school with the highest rate of kids whose parents have opted out of state vaccination requirements on philosophical or religious grounds. According to state records, that’s 57 of 84 Shining Star students.

Oregon has the highest rate of philosophical exemptions to vaccin

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