HiN1 Update

Many of you have contacted the school with questions regarding the H1N1 "Swine" Flu. USD 420, Osage City Schools wants to assure you that your child's health and well-being is a top priority of your administrators, faculty, staff and Board of Education. We have been in contact with community health partners and have developed an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan. This plan can be viewed on the schools website under the Superintendents update at www.usd420.0rg.

The plan includes a lot of detail, so below are some key points I wanted to bring to your attention:

1. The Centers for Disease Control and Kansas Department of Health and Environment guidelines require children be fever free without the use of fever-reducing medications, such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) or Ibuprofen (Motrin), for 24 hours before returning to school.
2. If your child exhibits flu-like symptoms, please keep your child home. We will have to send any child home that comes to school and is exhibiting flu-like symptoms.
3. School will remain open unless enough teachers, staff or students are absent that keeping school open is not feasible.

We have also been working with students on some simple yet effective ways to protect themselves and other in a situation such as this:

1. Covering their mouth with a tissue or sleeve when they cough and sneeze.
2. Frequent hand-washing with soap. Hand sanitizers are not a replacement for good hand washing. The school is using a non-alcohol based hand sanitizer. Alcohol based sanitizers are flammable. This could be a cause of disaster in a school building.
3. Avoiding touching their eyes, nose or mouth to minimize the risk of exposure to germs.

At this time there have been no confirmed cases of H1N1 in Osage County, which a good news. The plan details the steps we will take if USD 420 sees a sever outbreak of the H1N1 virus. Our goal here is to plan for the worst and hope for the best. We will keep you updated and informed of any new developments that impact USD 420. As always, please feel free to contact me,a building administrator, school nurse your doctor or local community health clinic with any questions or concerns.

Information pertaining to the Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan Click the following site:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfkgwfds_233fcqbr3hk