Close to a dozen Marin county health care workers visited San Geronimo Valley Community Center on Thursday hoping to make a dent in the large number of unvaccinated students in the Lagunitas School District.

The health workers came equipped with about 120 doses of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, but only two kids and two adults showed up for a shot during the three-hour free vaccination clinic. The county sponsored the clinic at the request of the school district’s principal Laura Shain.

“We called all our families who have a student who hasn’t had the MMR vaccination to inform them that this was a free clinic coming Thursday and to make use of it,” Shain said.

Information on the vaccine and its safety was also sent home with unvaccinated students at Lagunitas School and San Geronimo Valley School on Tuesday.

According to state records, at the beginning of the school year 58 percent of the 19 kindergartners at San Geronimo Valley Elementary and 7 percent of the 14 kindergartners at Lagunitas Elementary had avoided getting some or all of their vaccinations by utilizing the state’s personal belief exemption. San Geronimo Valley has some of the highest personal belief exemption rates in the county.

Not all students who claim the exemption refuse to get all of their vaccinations. Some pick and choose. Shain said 16 of the 100 students at San Geronimo have not received the MMR vaccination while 30 of the 187 kids at Lagunitas Elementary have not received their MMR vaccination.

Despite the lackluster turnout on Thursday, Shain said news of the measles outbreak at Disneyland and the two cases of measles in two unvaccinated Marin children last month has had an effect.

“We have a number of families who have taken their children in and gotten the vaccination at their doctors,” Shain said.

She said some parents are reacting to new scientific information buttressing the safety of vaccinations; some parents are more willing to have their children vaccinated now that they’re older.

And Shain said, “There are families who feel the pressure from their peers; they know we have children here with compromised immune systems and some pregnant parents.”

Shain said two district students are being treated for leukemia.

Dr. Matthew Willis, the public health officer for Marin County, said, “It’s our role to eliminate every possible barrier to vaccination, whether that is knowledge or convenience or cost or access. When a community of concern like this reaches out we want to do everything we can.”

Willis also said recent publicity about the measles outbreak seems to be having a positive effect.

“We’re hearing very encouraging anecdotal stories from both our school communities and our pediatricians that there has been a run on MMR vaccine,” Willis said.

Last year Marin County Public Health and the Marin County Office of Education surveyed the parents of 493 Marin kindergartners to better understand why some parents chose not to vaccinate. The top reason cited was “children get too many vaccines at the same time.”

Two young mothers hanging out with their kids on the Lagunitas School playground Thursday while the vaccination clinic was taking place seemed to mirror those results.

Both women said they vaccinate their children for some diseases; but they said they do it on their own timetable. One said she waited until her children were 4 and 5 before getting their MMR vaccination. The other said she only recently had her two-year-old vaccinated for measles.

“It wouldn’t have been my decision; but there was so much fear mongering around that my husband got caught up in it,” she said.

Neither woman wanted to be identified. They said they didn’t like the way that Kelly McMenimen, a Lagunitas parent who is skeptical of vaccines, was portrayed in a January New York Times article.

But Susan Stein, who was picking up her grandchildren at Lagunitas School Thursday, wasn’t shy about stating her views about vaccines.

Stein, whose husband is a physician, said, “I think there is more danger of getting killed in a car accident than getting measles, mumps, chicken pox or the flu. For some people they might need it. Really elderly people. People who are frail and their immune system is compromised. That’s their choice. I just believe in choice.”