This note from Superintendent Phyllis Edwards was distributed to parents and interested non-parents yesterday evening.

In related news, Emory’s H1N1 vaccine trials on children started yesterday.

Dear Parents/Guardians:

As you may know flu-like illness is circulating in our region and community. We are beginning to see students with flu like illness in all the schools. The illnesses are generally mild with symptoms lasting only a few days. Please know that we will inform you of any significant increase in numbers of absences related to flu like illness or any clustering of illness. We will not, however, inform you of each incidence of illness that shows up in a school.

We are working closely with the DeKalb County Board of Health and following the guidelines from the CDC to monitor flu conditions and make decisions about the next steps to take concerning schools. We will keep you updated with new information as it becomes available.

One of the challenges in tracking H1N1 relates to the CDC protocol of testing only hospitalized patients exhibiting flu like symptoms. Because H1N1 is a relatively mild illness, except for those in high risk groups (pregnant women, persons with asthma or who are immunosuppressed), local pediatricians and the health department are not testing patients with flu like symptoms but diagnosing flu based on symptoms only. We will diligently track students with flu like symptoms but will rarely have a definite diagnosis.

For the community at large and the school system in particular, these are challenging times as we all digest information from the CDC about prevalence and incidence of illness. We continue to take steps to reduce the spread of illness in all our schools. We want to keep schools open to students and functioning in a normal manner during this flu season but, we need your help to do this.

For now we are doing everything we can to keep our schools clean, safe and functioning as usual. Here are a few things you can do to help.

1) Teach your children to wash their hands often with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub. You can set a good example by doing this yourself.

2) Know the signs and symptoms of the flu. Symptoms of the flu include fever (100 degrees or greater), cough, sore throat, runny/stuffy nose, body aches and feeling very tired. Some people may also vomit and have diarrhea.

3) Keep sick children at home for at least 24 hours after they no longer have fever or do not show signs of fever, without using fever-reducing drugs such as Tylenol or Motrin (ibuprofen). Aspirin should not be given to children or teenagers who have the flu; this can cause a rare but serious illness called Reye?s syndrome. Keeping children with a fever at home will reduce the number of people who may get infected.

4) Do not send children to school if they are sick. Any children who are determined to be sick while at school will be sent home. This is a good opportunity to plan ahead for your child care needs if this should occur.

5) Teach your children not to share personal items like drinks, food or unwashed utensils and to cover their coughs and sneezes with tissues; covering up their coughs or sneezes using the elbow, arm or sleeve instead of the hand when a tissue is unavailable.

Basic foundation of infection control should be routine throughout the school year. During flu season families, staff and students need to be especially vigilant and proactive in using and encouraging others to use basic prevention methods.

If the flu becomes more severe, we may take additional steps to prevent the spread such as:

– Modifying school programs and activities (i.e. cancelling school assemblies, limiting group activities and activities between classes, postponing class trips.

– Conducting active fever and flu symptom screening of students and staff as they arrive at school.

For more information visit www.flu.gov or call 1-800-CDC-INFO for the most current information about the flu. For more information about flu in our community and what our school system is doing, visit our CSD Web site at www.decatur-city.k12.ga.us or the DeKalb County Board of Health Web site at www.dekalbhealth.net or call your school nurse. We will notify you of any additional changes to our strategy to prevent the spread of flu.

Thank you for your assistance in keeping the children of our system healthy and eager to learn.

Sincerely,

Phyllis A. Edwards, Ed.D. Superintendent of Schools