Pennsylvania State University, Temple and the University of Pittsburgh will split $10 million in the state’s first allotment toward performance-based funding under the new budget.
It’s the first time since the legislature passed the new performance-based formula last November that the three so-called state-related universities are receiving the funding in addition to the general appropriation they received last year. The formula considers overall enrollment, graduation rates, number of lower-income students as measured by those receiving federal Pell grants, students receiving degrees in high demand areas, and other factors.
For Penn State, the new funding will amount to a little over $4 million, raising its general education subsidy to $246.1 million, the school said in a news release. The school said it was its first increase in state education funding since 2019.
“This initial investment is an important first step that recognizes the essential role higher education plays in strengthening our commonwealth,” Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi said. “The metrics at the heart of this model align closely with Penn State’s mission and values.”
Temple said it would receive a little over $2 million in performance-based funding, in addition to its $158.2 million general appropriation. The North Philadelphia-based university also is set to receive $500,000 for its “University College,” which helps adult and non-traditional students and lifelong learners pursue degrees. A university spokesperson said the money is for the school’s bachelor of general studies program.
The performance-based funding grew out of a longstanding battle between the legislature and state-affiliated universities over transparency and accountability. State-related universities received hundreds of millions in state funding, yet have a quasi-public status exempting them from much of the state’s open records laws, a fact that has long been criticized by some legislators.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, signed the $50.8 billion budget deal Sunday, applauding leaders from both parties for their work on the issue. He specifically highlighted House Minority Leader Jesse Topper (R., Bedford), who has led the charge to create the new performance-based funding model.
“That’s something that leaders in Harrisburg have talked about for years and years and years, but we came together and we got it done,” Shapiro said during a news conference before signing the budget deal into law.
Meanwhile, the system that oversees Pennsylvania’s 10 universities including West Chester and Cheyney will receive $626.1 million, up about $5 million over last year. The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education had been seeking a $31 million or a 5% boost in order to roll back a 4.3% tuition increase its board approved last week.
System spokesperson Kevin Hensil said Monday that the tuition increase would stay in place.
In-state students, who make up the vast majority of the system, will pay $8,338 annually, up $344 from $7,994.
The extra $5 million from the legislature, Hensil said, was “due to the expiration of funds related to a transfer workforce development partnership initiative” and would not impact the tuition increase.
The budget also included $78 million for debt relief in the system, but Hensil said that also would not impact the tuition increase.
“We are determining how it will be used, as we have in the past when such money was provided,” he said. “That analysis is underway.”
By the state covering the PASSHE debt, Shapiro said it would enable the state’s 10 state-owned universities to “shift those dollars into more funding for our faculty, more funding for our students, and more funding for our academic programs.”
In addition to West Chester and Cheyney, the other universities in the 83,005-student system include: Commonwealth, East Stroudsburg, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Millersville, Penn West, and Shippensburg.
Lincoln University, which also is a state-related school, is not included in the performance-based funding plan, but it received a $1.1 million boost.
Funding for the state’s community colleges was held flat.
Students in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education will face a 4.3% tuition hike — the largest percentage increase in a decade — if the system does not get a boost in state funding.
PASSHE’s board of governors voted unanimously Thursday on the plan, which would enact the tuition increase if the system does not receive a 5%, or $31 million, increase in its state appropriation, which currently stands at $625 million. Gov. Shapiro has proposed flat funding for the system, and budget negotiations are continuing.
Tuition would rise to $8,338 annually, up $344 from $7,994.
“We’re all disappointed to … have to make this motion,” board chair Cynthia Shapira said. “We hope we do get the increase.”
The 10 universities in the system are Cheyney, West Chester, Commonwealth, East Stroudsburg, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Millersville, Penn West, and Shippensburg. Collectively, they enrolled 83,005 students last academic year, when the system experienced its first enrollment increase in 15 years. About 90% of students are Pennsylvania residents.
The vote to increase tuition came one day after Temple University approved a budget thatincreased tuition an average of 3.4% for next year.
Rutgers University also on Thursday voted to increase tuition 3% for in-state and out-of-state students, which the school touted as its lowest increase in four years. Tuition for a typical in-state, full-time arts and sciences undergraduate will increase on average $448 for the year, rising from $14,933 to $15,381, the school said. Meals and housing on average will rise 4%, from $15,332 to $15,945.
Earlier this year, the University of Pennsylvaniaincreased its total costs by 3.8% for 2026-27. Pennsylvania State University, which approves tuition increases a year in advance, hiked tuition 2% for in-state students at University Park for 2026-27 and froze it for those attending Commonwealth campuses.
The resolution approved by the PASSHE board calls for the increase to be rolled back “if sufficient funding in state appropriation is received.”
System chancellor Christopher Fiorentino said the tuition increase would cover the $31 million gap if the system does not get the increase. The board of governors took the same action last year and did not roll back a 3.6% tuition hike because the state held its funding flat.
“We’re still really the most affordable four-year option that’s out there,” Fiorentino said in an interview before the meeting, comparing PASSHE schools to state-related universities like Temple and Penn State where tuition is more than twice that amount.
Until 2025, the system had kept tuition at the same rate for seven years; if it had enacted inflationary increases, tuition would be $1,800 higher now, Fiorentino said. Preceding the freeze, tuition hikes were 2.5% in 2016-17, 3.5% in 2017-18, and 3% in 2018-19.
Fiorentino said he continues to make the system’s case to legislators for more funding.
“Our graduates earn 65% more over their careers than people without college degrees, which is about a million dollars in lifetime earnings,” he said. “Ninety percent of our students are from Pennsylvania, and 80% of them take their first job in Pennsylvania after they graduate. Investing in the PASSHE system … is truly an investment in the workforce of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
System to launch new ‘last dollar’ scholarships
The system also announced that beginning in fall 2027, it would provide “last dollar” scholarships to all Pennsylvania students who receive federal Pell and state Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency grants. For many students from the lowest-income families, the grants cover full tuition, but some families in the middle range who receive smaller amounts of aid are still on the hook for part of the cost, the chancellor said.
“They’re the ones that tend to get caught in a bind, and they’re the ones that we’ve been worried about,” he said. “We’re going to cover the balance of their tuition” and make sure they are not affected by future tuition increases.
Fiorentino said he hopes that donors will want to contribute to the effort so the level of aid can be expanded.
The new scholarship program, called the PASSHE Pledge, will not cover room and board or fees.
He did not have an estimate of how many students would qualify, but said system officials have been worried about losing them. And that would add to the enrollment decline at a time when the system, like other colleges, already is challenged by a shrinking pool of available high school students.
“We’re hoping this is going to increase our enrollment numbers,” Fiorentino said.
It is too early to predict fall enrollment, he said, but some of the system’s 10 universities are doing better with deposits than last year, some the same, and some a little worse.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that we’re going to be stable,” he said.
The system is partnering with community colleges to streamline the transfer process and concentrating on bringing students with some college credits and no degree back into the system, he said.
“We will continue to work hard to maintain and grow our enrollments,” he said.
On a small Lancaster County farm last month, five of the eight King siblings sprawled on the living room floor, sucking on ice pops and listening to calming music, trying not to scratch their itchy skin.
The next county over, in Hershey, children were lying in hospital beds as their immune systems battled an infection damaging their organs.
Pennsylvania is now seeing its worst measles outbreak in 30 years, centered around rural counties just west of the Philadelphia metro area. Lancaster County has emerged as a particular hot spot, with 51 of the 89 total measles cases reported this year in the state.
Anti-vaccination sentiment is prevalent in Lancaster County, where vaccination rates among kindergarteners are some of the lowest in the state. Known for its agricultural bounty and the Amish and Mennonite communities that dot its rural landscapes, Lancaster is also home to the state’s eighth-largest city with an economy heavily supported by tourism and entertainment.
In Lancaster, doctors say many are flocking to local clinics and pop-up vaccination events as cases rise. But others, like the King family, remain resolute in their decision not to vaccinate, instead preparing to ride out what they hope will be an inconvenient summer interruption that builds character and family bonding.
The family isolated in their home for weeks in June while all eight unvaccinated children, who range in age from a 1 to 15, recovered from measles. Their 14-year-old son experienced the most severe symptoms, and went to the emergency department when coughing and nausea rendered him unable to keep down water or medicine.
“Measles isn’t fun, seeing your kids sick isn’t fun,” said Gina King, 41, who lives outside New Holland. But, she added, “I know this is going to be added to the King family core memories.”
The 89 cases Pennsylvania has recorded so far this year exceed by more than five times the cases recorded in 2025. Doctors say the official tally may be an undercount, with many cases going unreported.
An Inquirer analysis found both the metropolis and state increasingly have become vulnerable to a major outbreak.In the 2024-2025 school year, kindergarten vaccination rates in 50 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties were below the 95% vaccination rate scientists consider necessary to keep the virus from spreading. And even in counties with vaccination rates near so-called “herd immunity,” school-level vaccine data show that susceptible communities pockmark the region.
The majority of measles cases resolve in weeks with mild-to-moderate flulike symptoms, but the disease can take life-altering and even deadly turns, especially for young children.
Doctors and nurses who spoke to The Inquirer could not comment on the King family’s experience because they did not treat them.
But they cautioned that they have seen the harm measles can do to a child’s body: neurological damage, respiratory infections, and pneumonia, which can lead to death.
“Each one of those cases where a child suffers something really devastating — it only takes seeing one for it to really be something that hits home very hard,” said Evan Shirey, a pediatric infectious disease physician who has treated several children with measles at Penn State Health Golisano Children’s Hospital this year.
On the front lines of measles
As a medical student, Shirey never expected he would treat a measles case himself. By 2000, vaccination rates across the United States were so high that the disease was declared eliminated.
“I read the textbooks like they were history books,” Shirey said.
But as vaccination rates decreased, he and other providers began preparing in the last couple of years. He feared inevitably seeing cases like the several adults and children treated at Penn State hospitals this year.
He declined to share details on the cases, saying hospitalization numbers are low enough that doing so would risk compromising patients’ privacy.
Shirey said he’s also fielding “constant” phone calls from pediatricians all over the state as they prepare for — or deal with — emerging measles cases.
Intensive protection measures implemented at Penn State hospitals in Dauphin County, for example, include testing patients with respiratory symptoms, or who were potentially exposed to measles, and isolating them while they wait for test results.
The virus is so contagious, it can infect nine in 10 people who haven’t been vaccinated.
“Airborne diseases are a whole other world,” said Nancy Himmelberger, a critical care registered nurse at Golisano Children’s Hospital and the vice president of its nurses’ union, which is affiliated with SEIU.
Shirey tries to explain to parents why vaccination is the best defense against measles. “I do encounter a lot of parents who truly want the best for their child, and they’re afraid because of what they see on TV or social media.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children receive two doses of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine at 1 year of age and before starting kindergarten, typically around age 5.
The vaccine is among those required for students to attend school, though Pennsylvania’s lax rules allow families to opt out for medical, religious, or philosophical reasons.
In response to rising cases, Pennsylvania earlier this year updated its guidelines to recommend babies be given their first dose as early as 6 months.
Once someone is infected with measles, Shirey stresses, no treatments are available that specifically target the virus.
Vitamin A may be given to children who have been hospitalized with severe measles symptoms, but it is not a cure and cannot prevent the disease. Excessive amounts of vitamin A can be dangerous.
“For measles, it is supportive care and trying to manage the complications that occur,” Shirey said.
Gina King and her daughters pick strawberries at their home in Lancaster County. Tyger Williams / Staff Photograp
Trying to change vaccine perspectives
When King and her husband, Shawn, began their family 15 years ago, they thought carefully about each vaccine recommended for their babies. They read package labels and looked up ingredients. For each shot, they considered whether they were more comfortable with the risk of side effects from the vaccine, or the risk of illness from skipping it.
When their pediatrician recommended a hepatitis shot before traveling to India, the Kings decided the risk of the disease was greater than any potential side effects.
But when it came to the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, they were uncomfortable that the rubella portion of the vaccine was developed using cells of an aborted fetus.
Vaccines themselves do not contain fetal material. And most major religions promote vaccination, even if they oppose abortion, reasoning that parents have a moral duty to protect their children and the health of the public.
Gina and Shawn King’s sons relax in hammocks after being cooped up inside with measles for several days. Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Measles at home
The Kings weren’t aware their children had been exposed to measles, but knew cases were spreading locally. When their two oldest sons, aged 14 and 15, began showing symptoms, they locked down their home.
They appreciated how people can be contagious before and after they experience symptoms. They have relatives with cancer and Down syndrome, conditions that could put them at risk of severe illness if they contracted measles.
“If you made the choice to not vaccinate, you knew there was a risk of getting sick,” King wrote in a tip sheet she created to share with other families. “We should care about others enough to be willing to make some sacrifices to protect vulnerable people.”
Grandparents offered to help care for the children, but the Kings declined for fear of getting anyone else sick.
Instead, friends and family left treats for the kids on the front porch, picked up grocery orders, and checked in through video chat.
Days four, five, and six, were the thorniest, King said. She draped chilled washcloths over the foreheads of her usually independent teens, brought them tea, and read books to them.
She spent at least one night sitting beside the bed of her 14-year-old son, whose coughing and nausea were so bad he couldn’t eat or drink, and she worried he’d become dehydrated.
“I just wanted to be there and keep an eye on him,” she said.
A few days after the boys started feeling well enough to go outside, the five girls, who range in age from 4 to 12, were sick. The baby experiencedthe most mild symptoms among the siblings.
King, who is vaccinated, also got sick, though her husband, who is not vaccinated, has yet to develop symptoms. Vaccinated people, in rare instances, can contract measles, and infection is more likely in an outbreak.
After being inside all day, it became part of the family’s routine to tuck the kids into the back of their family ATV with blankets and more ice pops, and ride around their property to say goodnight to the sheep, cows, horses, and fruit trees.
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Community support
Elsewhere in Lancaster, church communities and friend groups are encouraging people who are sick to stay home, as well asthose who are unvaccinated with a higher risk of severe illness.
Claudia Beiler, a Lancaster mother of five and a Christian wellness influencer,said she has dropped off vitamins, coffee, and dinner for friends and others in her community who were quarantining at home.
Beiler has posted frequently to her more than 110,000 Instagram followers about her decision not to vaccinate her children. She has also offered tips about how to weather measles cases at home.
Like the Kings, she says families who don’t vaccinate must avoid spreading the virus to vulnerable people.
“There’s a seriousness I’m proud of,” she said. “It feels like a lot of care and kindness.”
At Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital, physician JeffreyMartin is heartened when he hears that residents have decided to isolate themselves when diagnosed with the virus. He sees it as a measure of the community spirit inherent to Lancaster County.
But isolating once symptoms emerge isn’t enough to protect the community, since the virus can spread days before the first sneeze or cough. The disease’s signature rash typically does not appear for several days.
“‘I can accept the risk’ doesn’t play well with infectious disease,” he said. “Creating space for people to think about that on another level is really important.”
Amid the latest outbreak, Martin said, clinics run by the state health department and Penn Medicine have seen high attendance, with unvaccinated patients choosing to get the shot.
Martin and his colleagues don’t ask many questions about why: “We’re just thankful that people are showing up,” he said.
A teenager who authorities say killed a Penn State student surrendered to Philadelphia police on Thursday, one day after U.S. marshals captured a second teen wanted in the slaying more than 1,700 miles from the South Philadelphia street where the crime occurred.
Smith and Azzubair Outen-Fleming, 16, are expected to face charges of murder, robbery, criminal conspiracy, illegal possession of a firearm, and related crimes in the June 6 death of William “Billy” Schmidt.
Both teens had been on the run until Wednesday night, authorities said, when members of the U.S. Marshals Service arrested Outen-Fleming at a house in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Smith remained at large until Thursday.
Police have said Outen-Fleming and Smith killed Schmidt, 22, shortly after 1 a.m. as he walked toward his South Philadelphia home.
According to prosecutors, surveillance video captured two masked people — identified by investigators as Outen-Fleming and Smith — robbing Schmidt of his cell phone, searching his pockets, and then, moments later, shooting him.
Smith, they said, is accused of firing the fatal shot.
The teenagers fled after the shooting, police said.
On Wednesday, prosecutors also announced charges against Outen-Fleming’s stepfather, Donte Abdulmalik, who they said helped him evade authorities after the killing.
Abdulmalik was charged with hindering apprehension, obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and related crimes.
Deputies with the U.S. Marshals Service’s Violent Offender Task Force tracked Outen-Fleming this week to a house in southern Colorado Springs with “ties to his family in Philadelphia,” Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark said. After conducting surveillance, deputies arrested him there late Wednesday.
Schmidt’s father, William, did not return a phone call Thursday afternoon, and attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful.
Philadelphia police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp said it was not clear when Outen-Fleming would be returned to Philadelphia.
A teen wanted in the shooting death of Penn State student William “Billy” Schmidt in South Philadelphia last month was apprehended in Colorado, the U.S. Marshals Service said Wednesday night.
Azzubair Outen-Fleming, 16, was taken into custody in Colorado Springs at the home of a distant relative, the U.S. Marshals Service said. The teen was being housed at the Zebulon Pike Youth Center awaiting extradition to Philadelphia.
Earlier on Wednesday, District Attorney Larry Krasner announced the arrest of Outen-Fleming’s stepfather for allegedly hindering the police investigation into the slaying of Schmidt.
Donte Abdulmalik, 35, was charged with hindering apprehension, obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and related crimes, Krasner said Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Abulmalik helped his stepson leave the city. He is not accused of participating in the homicide.
The teens will face charges of murder, robbery, criminal conspiracy, illegal possession of a firearm, and related offenses, Krasner said.
He suggested that the investigation could involve others, describing the charges against the two teenagers and Abdulmalik as “a smaller part of a bigger picture.”
“I am not telling you that these are the only people involved,” Krasner said during a news conference Wednesday. “I’m not telling you that this investigation is over or that we have all the answers yet.”
Philadelphia police have said Schmidt was walking home when two masked people approached him. During what investigators say was an attempted robbery, one of the suspects — whom Krasner identified as Smith — shot Schmidt.
Surveillance camera footage shows that one suspect took Schmidt’s phone, prosecutors said Wednesday, then rifled through his pockets before knocking him to the ground.
Additional footage later shows Schmidt walking behind the suspects, before one throws a phone down the block and the other fires a bullet into Schmidt’s chest.
Krasner declined to say whether the gun used to kill Schmidt had been recovered.
Investigators say surveillance cameras captured the suspects before and after the shooting. One was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with a hand-drawn “KONFUSED” logo and a skull-and-crossbones sketched in black marker on the front, according to the footage. After the shooting, police said, both suspects fled wearing white T-shirts.
Philadelphia police and the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force are searching for the remaining teenager. Both agencies have offered rewards for information leading to the arrests of both teens. Krasner said Smith has ties to Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood and Delaware.
Anyone with information may contact the U.S. Marshals Service at 1-866-865-8477 or submit a tip online through its website: usmarshals.gov. Tips can also be provided to Philadelphia police at 215-686-3334 or 215-686-8477.
Universities should not need permission from sports conference administrators to engage with Congress on legislation that will shape their future. That statement should be obvious.
As what had been a slow-brewing crisis in college athletics comes to a boil, Washington is finally paying attention.
For years, universities have struggled to manage a system increasingly shaped by sweeping court rulings, a patchwork of often-contradictory state laws, and endlessly competing commercial interests rather than any coherent national policy. Athletes navigate a tangle of name, image, and likeness rules, which govern the compensation they can receive and whichvary widely by state. Administrators make decisions without knowing what the rules will look like six months from now. And fans watch their favorite players transfer from campus to campus with few reliable guardrails in place.
Yet as Congress considers the Protect College Sports Act, the most significant attempt in years to establish a national framework for college athletics — many universities appear reluctant to engage publicly while conference administrators increasingly position themselves as the primary voice speaking on behalf of their members.
That should concern every university trustee, president, donor, alumnus, college athlete, and policymaker.
This is not a debate about whether the Protect College Sports Act is perfect. It isn’t. Nor is it a debate about whether conference commissioners are talented leaders. Many are.
This is a debate about who should speak for universities when the future of higher education and intercollegiate athletics is being decided.
Nick Saban (left), the former University of Alabama football coach, speaks as Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) listens during a roundtable on the future of college athletics on Capitol Hill in March 2024.Manuel Balce Ceneta
The current system is broken — and there are only two realistic options for what comes next: a federal framework that restores stability and national standards, or the continuation of today’s chaos. There is no option three.
What troubles me most is not opposition to the Protect College Sports Act. Reasonable people can disagree. What troubles me is the notion that universities should remain silent while others speak for them.
As a Penn State graduate, two-time NCAA All-American wrestler, donor, parent of a future Penn State athlete, and someone who has spent four decades building businesses and advising organizations throughout college athletics, I have watched this moment unfold from nearly every angle.
My perspective comes from life as an athlete, entrepreneur, executive, adviser, and parent. From the wrestling mat to the boardroom, I have never seen college athletics facing greater uncertainty than it does today.
Congress is not asking the Big Ten what is best for Penn State. Congress is asking stakeholders what is best for college athletics.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) recently challenged the growing influence of conference administrators in the debate over the Protect College Sports Act.Steve Berkowitz, USA TODAY Sport
Lawmakers are finally engaging. They are asking questions. They are seeking input from universities, athletic leaders, and stakeholders across the country. Penn State should be part of that conversation.
If conference administrators are prohibiting university leaders, trustees, athletic directors, donors, and other stakeholders from engaging directly with lawmakers or expressing support for legislation, then conference employees are attempting to silence the voices of the institutions that created them. That is not their role.
Universities created the conferences. Conferences exist to serve universities — not to control them.
If institutions with Penn State’s stature are unwilling to engage directly with lawmakers, then the future of college athletics will increasingly be shaped by others.
The stakes extend far beyond football. As a former student-athlete, I know firsthand that the value of college athletics goes well beyond the sports that generate the largest television audiences. Wrestling, volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, track and field, soccer, softball, lacrosse, and dozens of other sports depend on a healthy and sustainable collegiate model.
The opportunities those programs create changed my life, as they have changed the lives of countless others. They deserve to exist for future generations as well. That is what is at stake.
The decisions being made in Washington will affect every university in the nation. They will shape opportunities for college athletes for decades to come.
Pennsylvania’s universities deserve a voice in that discussion. Penn State certainly does — and it should take its seat at the table and speak with its own voice, as should other institutions that have recently voiced independent concerns, including Michigan, Ohio State, and USC.
Not because the legislation is perfect. Not because every stakeholder agrees. But because leadership requires engagement.
Penn State has never been a follower. It shouldn’t start now.
Chris Bevilacqua is a veteran of four decades in sports, media, and technology as an entrepreneur, operator, investor, and adviser, including founding the nation’s first 24-hour college sports television network. He is a 1986 graduate of Penn State where he was a two-time NCAA All-American on the wrestling team and also competed internationally for USA Wrestling.
Pennsylvania health officials and doctors on Friday said several people have been hospitalized amid a growing measles outbreak that has spread to six counties in the southeastern and central parts of the state.
At a news conference in Lancaster on the outbreak, which has sickened 72 people in the area since April, health officials stressed that vaccination was the best defense against the highly contagious disease.
Secretary of Health Debra Bogen said she could not comment on the exact number of people hospitalized to protect their privacy, as the number was still relatively small.
About one in 10 people who contract measles will require hospitalization, and three people were treated at hospitals in Lebanon County at the onset of the outbreak in late April.
Fahmida McGann, an infectious disease doctor at Penn State Health, said the health system’s Lancaster Medical Center has treated patients who needed to be hospitalized for several days with symptoms including serious electrolyte abnormalities and liver and kidney dysfunction.
Measles can infect up to 90% of unvaccinated people who come into contact with the disease, which can linger in the air for up to two hours.
Newborns and young children are at higher risk for serious complications, but adults can also experience them, especially if their immune systems are weakened. Doctors at Friday’s news conference said they had treated both adults and children in hospitals.
The state response
In the current outbreak, state officials have recorded 41 cases in Lancaster County, 20 in Lebanon County, six in Northumberland County, two each in Berks and Dauphin Counties, and one in York County.
Overall, the state has seen 84 measles cases this year, more than five times the cases recorded in all of 2025.
The outbreak is spreading largely among people who are unvaccinated, Bogen said.
“These are not numbers,” Bogen said. “They are children, parents, neighbors and friends.”
The health department is conducting contact tracing to detect cases, and working with local healthcare providers and community organizations to ensure residents have access to vaccines and accurate information on their efficacy and side effects.
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Health providers in Lancaster have said they believe there were more cases in the area than officials were aware of. Bogen said the department was working with community members to build trust and ensure that cases get reported.
“People who are part of the community are really the key to the response, because we want people to know that if they call the department, we are here to help them,” she said.
The department has vaccinated more than 430 people at pop-up clinics in the region in the last two months, she said, and state-run health centers around Pennsylvania have administered more than 1,300 measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine doses this year.
“We’re not sitting back and just watching the virus spread,” Bogen said. “We will not slow down until this outbreak is over.”
It’s crucial that residents get vaccinated, she said, to protect people who cannot safely get the vaccine, like newborns and pregnant women, and people whose immune systems are weakened, like organ transplant recipients and cancer patients.
On Wednesday, the department recommended that physicians vaccinate infants and young children against measles early, beginning at 6 months, in affected areas. The same precautions should be taken by families with infants traveling to these areas.
The department has also hosted webinars for hundreds of healthcare providers across the state. Measles was considered eradicated decades ago, and many doctors practicing today have never seen a case, Bogen said.
Jeffrey Martin, a physician at Penn Medicine’s Lancaster General Hospital, said he last encountered a measles case 30 years ago, as a medical student in Colorado.
“I still remember that patient, a child with a high fever, red eyes, and the classic rash we learned about in textbooks. At the time it was an illness we were trained to recognize,” he said. “None of us imagined that one day measles would become so rare that most physicians would go their entire careers without ever seeing a case.”
Now, he said, physicians in Lancaster must keep measles in mind when they’re treating patients with respiratory symptoms. The virus’s early symptoms include a fever, a cough, and a runny nose — similar to other respiratory diseases — before patients develop a telltale rash.
“It underscores the importance of being especially thoughtful about how we identify and respond to possible cases,” he said.
It’s also key for families to call ahead to doctors’ offices if they’re experiencing measles symptoms, so physicians can prepare to treat them without exposing other patients, Martin said.
Lower vaccination rates
Vaccination rates among kindergarteners have decreased across Pennsylvania in recent years, and some counties affected in the current outbreak have particularly low rates, including Lancaster, where about 88.5% of kindergarten students are vaccinated.
Health experts say 95% of a community must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease.
A map showing vaccination rates in kindergarteners for the 2024-2025 school year. Counties in yellow have vaccination rates between 95% and 90%. Counties in red have vaccination rates below 90%. To halt the spread of measles, at least 95% of a community must be vaccinated against the disease.John Duchneskie
The state is working with schools to increase vaccination rates, Bogen said Friday.
Bogen said she hoped the new database would encourage schools with lower vaccination rates to reach out to healthcare providers to ensure students have access to vaccines.
“We want to make sure as a public health department that we’re ensuring that anybody who wants access to a vaccine has that,” she said.
“It is a defining characteristic of our community to help others, especially the most vulnerable, during times of crisis,” he said.
Residents now have an opportunity to help protect vulnerable people from measles by getting vaccinated, raising awareness about the disease, and helping doctors decrease exposures in care settings, he said.
“When vaccination rates are high, the virus has very little opportunity to spread. When gaps emerge, even small ones, measles can find a way back in because it is so contagious,” Martin said. “Ultimately what keeps measles rare is not luck. It’s the choices we make together to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”
At a grand-reopening celebration at Stateside Live!, Stateside Vodka president Matt Quigley’s wife, Megan, grabbed his arm and beckoned to the crowd around them in disbelief.
“It was just such a prideful moment of like … we’re here to stay,” Quigley said.
Just a couple years earlier, fellow cofounder and CEO Clement “Clem” Pappas looked around Citizens Bank Park to see as many Surfsides as Miller Lites in the hands of Phillies fans: “Holy s —, this is happening,” Pappas recalled thinking at the time.
At their massive new Center City headquarters last week, Pappas and Quigley said Surfside’s astronomical rise still feels surreal.
In 2015, the area natives founded Stateside Vodka in a distillery near Kensington with their brothers, Zach Pappas and Bryan Quigley. The company started selling canned vodka sodas in 2021. But they launched into a different stratosphere when they debuted their spiked teas and lemonades in 2022.
Stateside Vodka’s taproom near Kensington is pictured in 2017, when it was called Federal Distilling. TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer
Branded as lower-calorie, better-for-you booze, the Surfside cans took off. The cofounders said they sold 200,000 cases in the first year, then 1.3 million in 2023, nearly 5 million in 2024, and a whopping 11.1 million cases last year.
The “slammable” 4.5% ABV cans, as Matt Quigley describes them, are particularly popular in the summertime, a three-month period that accounts for about half the beverage company’s retail sales.
So far this year, Stateside is on track for 70% growth in overall sales, and a 65% growth in Surfside sales, according to the company. That comes after a record year in which the company recorded 111% overall sales growth.
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As a private company, Stateside does not have to publicly disclose earnings, and executives declined to share specific sales figures.
While Surfside has accounted for about 90% of sales in the past year, the top executives are bullish on their latest invention, a sports-drink-inspired canned cocktail called Super Lyte. They said the new beverage had sold nearly 400,000 cases in three months, meaning it could outpace Surfside’s early growth.
“The initial response is way beyond our expectation,” Clem Pappas said. “It feels like another hit.”
The company has achieved this success without the backing of an alcohol giant like Anheuser-Busch InBev or Molson Coors, which together manufactures hundreds of brands.
Quigley, 42, and Pappas, 52, said they’ve been approached by nearly every big beverage company, but they have no interest in selling anytime soon.
“As long as you’re still having fun, I see no reason to hang up the metaphorical cleats,” Quigley said.
“I don’t want to sit on the bench. I want to be in the game,” Pappas said. “We still think it’s early days.”
Stateside keeps Philly at its heart amid national growth
A wall at Stateside Vodka’s new Center City headquarters shows a handful of Surfside’s 170 partnerships.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
In Stateside’s earliest days, Quigley recalled confiding in Pappas about a pipe dream: “If we ever get super successful, I want a sick office in a high-rise in Center City.”
More than a decade later, they have moved from a temporary office in Feasterville-Trevose, Bucks County, to a chic new headquarters at 11th and Ludlow Streets in Market East.
The company plans to stay put for at least 10 years, the cofounders said. For now, about 80 employees work there four days a week with room to grow.
On a recent day, the office was humming during a new-hire orientation. While everyday operations include the same mundane tasks required of any business, the top bosses pride themselves on keeping the vibes light. “We’re not selling, like, car insurance,” Quigley said.
The bright industrial-style space occupies 34,200 square feet across two floors. It is centered around a long bar with a backlit Stateside marquee, a replica of the one at the tasting room. Nearby, there’s an open lounge with couches, underneath a miniature Jumbotron. Ads for Surfside, Super Lyte, and Stateside rotate on the screens.
Office happy hours are a given.
“That’s part of the special sauce,” Pappas said. “We’re in the drinks business.”
Philadelphia has always been at the heart of the company. It’s where they landed their first partnership with the Phillies, which fueled Surfside’s rise. At Citizens Bank Park, the cans have been the top-selling spirit since 2023, according to Stateside executives, citing figures from concessions provider Aramark.
Across the city, the cofounders still run the 7,500-square-foot Kensington-area tasting room and distillery, the latter of which they hope to turn into an event venue.
The distillery has been outgrowing its space for a while. But the need intensified in the past year as the vodka’s retail sales increased 120%.
They attribute the boost in part to greater name recognition thanks to Stateside Live! They said they hope to move vodka production to a larger facility somewhere in the Northeast.
Sales of the original Stateside Vodka, displayed at the company’s office bar, have grown 120% year over year.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
The cofounders have also stayed local: Quigley, a Fort Washington native, lives in Kensington, and Pappas, originally of Vineland, is in Haddonfield.
Stateside’s reach, meanwhile, has expanded far beyond the region. The company employs about 340 nationwide, up from around 30 in 2022, executives said, and they sell in all 50 states through a network of more than 200 distributors.
Across the country, Surfside has racked up 170 partnerships, including with MLB teams, music festivals, and colleges. Super Lyte has already acquired more than a dozen partnerships, too, including at Penn State, where they said it will be sold at Beaver Stadium this fall.
A hawker carries drinks, including Surfsides, around the concourse at Citizens Bank Park in 2024. The brand now has 170 partnerships at venues nationwide.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
In many ways, the cofounders said, they’re trying to replicate the strategy that proved successful with Surfside at Citizens Bank Park: Connect with consumers somewhere where it feels only natural to grab a refreshing, familiar-tasting beverage.
“You’re at a hot baseball game,” Pappas said. “You got a hot dog. You got a soft pretzel. You got an iced tea” — or, rather, a Surfside.
Compared to seeing a new canned cocktail at a beer distributor, he added, “It’s more of an authentic, emotional connection.”
A beverage hawker sells Surfside cans during a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park in 2024. Surfside has been the stadium’s top-selling spirit since 2023.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Surfside succeeds with familiar tastes
When customers first sip a Surfside or Super Lyte, the taste is likely familiar, perhaps even comforting. It’s similar to iced tea, lemonade, tea cooler, or Gatorade, drinks that for many have been staples since childhood.
That’s intentional, Pappas and Quigley said, and is one of the reasons they think their products have become so popular.
“If you remember your first beer, it was like, ‘Oh God, who wants that?’ It’s bitter. It’s foreign,” Pappas said. “It’s an acquired taste.”
But when it comes to these canned cocktails, “these are not acquired tastes,” he added. “They’re light. They’re easy.”
Quigley said he got the idea for Super Lyte after years of mixing vodka into Gatorade and throwing the bottles into beach bags on summer vacations. He recalled thinking: “I can’t be the only person in America that’s been doing that for a long time.”
The initial uptake of Super Lyte confirmed that, he said.
Super Lyte launched in March with four flavors: fruit punch, orange, lemon-lime, and blue chill.
Surfside now has 16 variations of iced tea, lemonade, iced tea-lemonade, and green tea. A 12-ounce Surfside contains 100 calories, 2 grams of sugar, and no carbonation, while a 12-oz Super Lyte contains 90 calories, no sugar, and no carbonation.
Stateside Vodka’s new product line, Super Lyte, is displayed at the company’s new Center City headquarters.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
In the alcohol industry, “we’re meeting what was previously an unmet demand,” he said. It’s “all the convenience and the alcohol level of [a light] beer, where you can drink a few of them and you’re not getting sloshed.”
Even younger consumers — who are least likely to drink alcohol, according to recent surveys — are gravitating toward Stateside products, with high sales in some college towns.
Pappas and Quigley said they don’t see drinking rates declining much farther. Instead, they predict an evolution in the market, with an even greater focus on ready-to-drink cocktails.
Matt Quigley (left), Stateside’s president and cofounder, talks about the company’s products with fellow cofounder and CEO Clement Pappas.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
So Stateside’s leaders plan to keep crafting new products, they said, which is one of the reasons they have turned down acquisition offers.
“Big, publicly traded multinational companies just aren’t great at innovating,” Pappas said.
Stateside has now established “enough of the back-end capabilities to really compete pretty effectively,” he said, without losing “that entrepreneurial spirit” and the drive “to innovate and disrupt.”
At the moment, he said, they are working on several beverage ideas, none of which are ready for publication.
But it seems unlikely they’ll dabble in nonalcoholic drinks. As Quigley noted, “then it would just be iced tea.”
Before Philadelphia’s chefs, bakers, restaurateurs, and bartenders take center stage at tonight’s James Beard Awards in Chicago, one Philadelphian has already brought home a medal.
On Saturday night, Inquirer staff photographer Monica Herndon won the 2026 James Beard Media Award for Narrative Photography for “The hunt for life-giving ‘country food’ in the Canadian Arctic,” a photo essay documenting Inuit food traditions in the remote northern Québec community of Inukjuak.
The Inquirer’s Monica Herndon, winner of the Narrative Photography Award, speaks during the 2026 James Beard Media Awards on June 13.Jeff Schear / Getty Images for the James Beard Foundation
The project accompanied reporting by Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan and chronicled how residents hunt, prepare, share, and preserve traditional foods, including seal, beluga, and caribou. In October 2024, Herndon and LaBan followed filmmaker Kirk French of Penn State to the region as he screened a documentary.
“There was this moment, at the end of the trip when I was leaving, when one of the elders pulled me aside and whispered, ‘You know you’re very lucky to be here,’” Herndon recalled in a chat Monday before she photographed tacos for a food article. “It sent chills down my spine.”
A father and daughter walk near the Innuksuak River in Inukjuak, Quebec.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
A native of Annapolis, Md., Herndon has worked at The Inquirer for nearly seven years. She won a 2022 Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award and Best in Show recognition from the National Press Photographers Association’s Northern Short Course contest for her work on The Inquirer’s “Wildest Dreams” project, a mini-anthology of storytelling about Black cultural inheritance, legacy, and joy.
Now the attention turns to the restaurant and chef awards, which will be presented tonight at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Philadelphia enters the ceremony with seven finalists, one of the strongest showings of any city in the country. Kalaya is nominated for Outstanding Restaurant, while Emmett is a finalist for Best New Restaurant. The Lovers Bar at Friday Saturday Sunday is in the running for Outstanding Bar.
In individual categories, Justine MacNeil of Fiore is a finalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker. The hotly contested Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic category includes three Philadelphia contenders: Jesse Ito of Royal Sushi & Izakaya, Amanda Shulman of Her Place Supper Club, and Omar Tate and Cybille St.Aude-Tate of Honeysuckle.
Philadelphia already has one James Beard honor secured this year.
In February, Center City’s Oyster House received a James Beard America’s Classics Award, recognizing restaurants with timeless appeal and deep roots in their communities.
Constellation Energy crews have been laboring since 2024 to reopen Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 nuclear plant to meet spiking electricity demand. Planned data centers and other new demands have materialized since 2019, when the plant was shut because generating power there was too expensive to compete with cheap natural gas.
Now Constellation has moved up its own deadlines and says it’s approaching its goal to load uranium next spring and add electricity to the grid later in 2027.
That’s despite naysayers such as Neil Chatterjee, President Donald Trump’s former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair.
“It will never work” because of TMI’s aging technology and the complex U.S. and Pennsylvania energy bureaucracies, Chatterjee wrote in January in The Hill, which neglected to note Chatterjee had become a solar-power lobbyist.
In testimony submitted to regulators, environmental groups, including Eric Epstein’s TMI Alert, called the utility’s plans rushed and incomplete. Montgomery County-based PJM, which oversees power distribution for 13 states and the District of Columbia, warned it could be 2031 before the plant could connect to the power grid, Constellation chief executive Joe Dominguez told analysts and investors in March.
But Dominguez minimized that warning. “Normally, they start off with a pretty long timeline and shorten that up,“ he told investors in a conference call May 11, adding that he would work with states to speed connections.
Dominguez has moved up the original 2028 target date to next year, in part because of supporters like President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and because Microsoft has promised to buy as much power as the plant produces to run a growing array of data centers.
So Constellation is paying an army of builders, lawyers, and plant operators to prepare the plant.
At Constellation’s nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pa., in June 2025. Ted Shaffrey
New equipment
Constellation bought three building-sized replacement transformers from manufacturer Hyundai in South Korea, to be delivered later this month, after reinforcing the bridge to the island to bear their weight. Two will be installed “later this year,” one kept as a spare, said spokesperson Paul M. Adams.
The company says crews are repairing the partly dismantled Bravo cooling tower and inspecting the reactor building and diesel motors on the site. They are restoring controls — originally analog systems made by manufacturers in Reading and other Pennsylvania cities.
The company has scheduled enriched-uranium fuel assembly deliveries from its supplier Framatome in Richland, Wash., later this year, so fuel can be loaded into the reactor core next spring. The uranium is sourced from U.S. and foreign mines.
The deal with Microsoft
Microsoft has promised to buy power equal to the plant’s entire production at prices above today’s levels for 20 years.
But that doesn’t mean the software and data-center giant is going to run wires to new, power-burning facilities in the neighborhood.
The Microsoft deal supports Constellation’s regulatory and investor arguments in favor of reopening. It confirms this major data-center operator will need more power in years to come.
Jobs for construction and plant workers
Constellation says more than 3,000 construction workers will help bring the plant, which it now calls the Crane Clean Energy Center, into service.
The company also has hired hundreds of permanent workers for the plant, named after the late Exelon Corp. CEO who spun off Constellation and championed nuclear power. More than 550 full-time employees are on site, including the current class of 80 operators being trained in federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission procedures.
About 145 of those employees are “boomerang” staff who worked at Three Mile Island before its 2019 shutdown, according to Constellation.
More than 400 hires livewithin 25 miles of the plant. They include about a dozen recent graduates of the Penn State Harrisburg campus nearby.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Doug Burgum (center) with Constellation Energy staff on May 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power complex Unit 1, which Constellation Energy plans to reopen as the Crane Clean Energy Center uranium-powered electric plant in 2027.Constellation
Shapiro, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.), U.S. Rep. Scott Perry (R., Pa.), state legislators, and local officials have toured the plant to tout job and energy creation.
With permit applications pending before the NRC and other agencies, Constellation says it is “on track” to restart the plant next spring and deliver energy into the grid by summer or fall.
U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick with Tori VanderMeersch, senior manager, operations support for the Crane Clean Energy Center, in the control room at Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant in early 2026.Constellation Energy
A workaround for PJM’s warning on connecting to the grid
In early June, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission agreed to an unusual switch: It will let Constellation transfer “Capacity Interconnection Rights” from its diesel- and natural gas-burning electric power plants at Eddystone, Delaware County, to Three Mile Island, to speed the process of bringing the nuclear plant back online.
Constellation says it can do this without having to shut the Eddystone complex because the Trump administration gave the company special permission to keep Eddystone open, along with other fossil-fuel plants that were earlier scheduled for closing under a long-term program to reduce carbon-burning. It no longer needs the rights at Eddystone and can apply them at Three Mile Island.
An agreement on using water from the Susquehanna River
The Susquehanna River Basin Commission in early June approved Constellation’s plan for using river water at the restarted Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
Constellation plans to pull 73 million gallons per day from the river to control temperatures at the plant. That’s about one-third of 1% of the river’s average flow; an equivalent volume of water will be released and won’t, on average, cause “significant adverse impact to the ecosystem and other users,” notes commission spokesperson Stacey Hanrahan.
“Of course, we do not review a project based on average daily flow,” but on days the river is low, for example during a drought, she added. If the river gets too low for too long, Constellation could be ordered to stop using it.
