Madrona K-8 closed due to swine flu
Seattle Public Schools has been informed by local health officials that there is a suspicious flu case, that may be Swine Flu, reported for a student at Madrona K-8. As a result of Public Health's ongoing investigation into the swine flu infection of a student at Madrona K-8, health officials believe that the infected student may have been ill during school last Friday. Out of an abundance of caution, Madrona K-8 will close for 7 days, starting Thursday April 30 and will reopen on May 7.
All other schools remain open.
For Madrona K-8 students and families: To avoid spreading infection, students should not gather outside of school during the week that school is closed. If students or staff do become ill, avoid contact with others and remain at home from work and school either for 7 days after illness starts or for a full day after the illness is over, whichever is longer. If your symptoms are more severe, call your health care provider to discuss if you need to be seen and evaluated, and tell them about the school closure for swine flu. We will keep you informed as more information is available.
All Seattle Public Schools students, families and staff are encouraged to continue prevention measures including covering coughs and sneezes, washing hands, and staying home if you are sick.
Seattle Public Schools wants to remind families, staff and students to take prevention steps to stay safe. These steps include:
* Sneeze or cough into a tissue, elbow or sleeve. Throw the tissue away.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth.
* If you are sick, stay home.
Seattle Public Schools is in constant contact with public health officials and the Centers for Disease Control. We will continue to take their guidance as new information is available.
If you have any questions feel free to call the Seattle King County Public Health Department at (206) 296-4949, talk to your school nurse, or visit www.kingcounty.gov/health or visit the Centers for Disease Control website, www.cdc.gov.
We will keep families and staff informed
Earlier this week we provided an informational letter to all schools that they can share with families and staff. We continue to stress the prevention guidelines listed in the letter. A copy of the informational letter with translations is below:
Amharic Cambodian Chinese Oromo Somali Spanish Tagalog Tigrigna Vietnamese
April 27, 2009
Dear Seattle Public Schools Students, Families and Staff:
On April 29 the first suspected cases of Swine Flu in King County were reported by public health officials. Seattle Public Schools staff works closely with the local, state, and national health agencies to investigate any illnesses and/or infections and we have plans in place to deal with any potential outbreaks.
Swine Flu in people is characterized by fever, sore throat, cough, body aches, headaches, chills, and fatigue. The illness may last up to seven days, but people are considered to be contagious as long as symptoms persist. If you or your child is showing mild flu-like symptoms, monitor and telephone your physician to consult if necessary or you can also consult with your school's nurse.
Seattle Public Schools wants to remind parents and staff members of the importance of prevention and how to stay safe.
What You Can Do To Prevent the Spread of Swine Flu
* Sneeze or cough into a tissue, elbow or sleeve. Throw the tissue in the trash after use.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
* If you are sick, stay home.
Symptoms of Swine Flu
* Fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills, fatigue.
Please remember that students should stay home when they have any of the following symptoms: fever (temperature 100 degrees or higher), vomiting or diarrhea, blistery rash, heavy nasal congestion or frequent cough and if your child has been diagnosed with a contagious disease.
If you have any questions feel free to call the Seattle King County Public Health Department at (206) 296-4949 or visit www.kingcounty.gov/health or visit the Centers for Disease Control website, www.cdc.gov.
Sincerely,
Jill Lewis, RN MN
Program Manager, Student Health Services
All other schools remain open.
For Madrona K-8 students and families: To avoid spreading infection, students should not gather outside of school during the week that school is closed. If students or staff do become ill, avoid contact with others and remain at home from work and school either for 7 days after illness starts or for a full day after the illness is over, whichever is longer. If your symptoms are more severe, call your health care provider to discuss if you need to be seen and evaluated, and tell them about the school closure for swine flu. We will keep you informed as more information is available.
All Seattle Public Schools students, families and staff are encouraged to continue prevention measures including covering coughs and sneezes, washing hands, and staying home if you are sick.
Seattle Public Schools wants to remind families, staff and students to take prevention steps to stay safe. These steps include:
* Sneeze or cough into a tissue, elbow or sleeve. Throw the tissue away.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth.
* If you are sick, stay home.
Seattle Public Schools is in constant contact with public health officials and the Centers for Disease Control. We will continue to take their guidance as new information is available.
If you have any questions feel free to call the Seattle King County Public Health Department at (206) 296-4949, talk to your school nurse, or visit www.kingcounty.gov/health or visit the Centers for Disease Control website, www.cdc.gov.
We will keep families and staff informed
Earlier this week we provided an informational letter to all schools that they can share with families and staff. We continue to stress the prevention guidelines listed in the letter. A copy of the informational letter with translations is below:
Amharic Cambodian Chinese Oromo Somali Spanish Tagalog Tigrigna Vietnamese
April 27, 2009
Dear Seattle Public Schools Students, Families and Staff:
On April 29 the first suspected cases of Swine Flu in King County were reported by public health officials. Seattle Public Schools staff works closely with the local, state, and national health agencies to investigate any illnesses and/or infections and we have plans in place to deal with any potential outbreaks.
Swine Flu in people is characterized by fever, sore throat, cough, body aches, headaches, chills, and fatigue. The illness may last up to seven days, but people are considered to be contagious as long as symptoms persist. If you or your child is showing mild flu-like symptoms, monitor and telephone your physician to consult if necessary or you can also consult with your school's nurse.
Seattle Public Schools wants to remind parents and staff members of the importance of prevention and how to stay safe.
What You Can Do To Prevent the Spread of Swine Flu
* Sneeze or cough into a tissue, elbow or sleeve. Throw the tissue in the trash after use.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
* If you are sick, stay home.
Symptoms of Swine Flu
* Fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills, fatigue.
Please remember that students should stay home when they have any of the following symptoms: fever (temperature 100 degrees or higher), vomiting or diarrhea, blistery rash, heavy nasal congestion or frequent cough and if your child has been diagnosed with a contagious disease.
If you have any questions feel free to call the Seattle King County Public Health Department at (206) 296-4949 or visit www.kingcounty.gov/health or visit the Centers for Disease Control website, www.cdc.gov.
Sincerely,
Jill Lewis, RN MN
Program Manager, Student Health Services
Comments
This makes how many useless robocalls I've gotten since they got the capability? Start times changes, Wasl, and what other non-emergency calls have there been? Now an actual potential emergency and they call too soon and give wrong information.
I don't see how this actually reduces the chance of infection. To me it just spreads it around more. Personally, I'd rather see the school put a nurse in an infected school full-time so they could make some judgement calls about specific students.
Sending all the Madrona K-8 kids out into the community while only possibly contagious (the case for the original kid has NOT yet been confirmed) seems premature. But, since I'm not a trained health-care worker, I most certainly could be wrong.
It's definitely a conundrum.
But, I think the problem is that the plan is unrealistic. The goal is to have each child stay home in their own family home. But, given that the rest of the city is not closed, that's going to be impossible for many of the kids.
I thought this was an odd decision -- perhaps the only justification I can think of is, that if 1/2 the kids are going to stay home anyway, you might as well send everyone home.
I'm also bugged that there's no standardized policy, and instead we have random local school officials making their decisions. Seems to me that there should be a directive from someone based on the public health concerns, which should be similar for all schools (i.e whether they're in Anne Arundell county or King county)
I think SPS did the right thing to call and alert the public to a potentially serious situation. It was the first I'd heard about the situation, and I am glad that I had the information and could make an educated decision on behalf of my family (send my kids to school, or keep them home, etc).
And, what makes you think the call was premature and gave the wrong information? My call came at 9:44PM - that's pretty late. And I would assume that it relayed the information that was available at that time.
The news stations also reported that the child was not contagious while at school, and the decision to close the school came directly from the principal of Madrona, after the robo call.
What would have been a better alternative? No call at all. A call at midnight? A call this morning?
Calling the wrong people, calling too soon with rumors and speculation just weakens the effect of calling at all. I've gotten at least four robocalls since snow season that were meaningless. Calling to remind me about WASL, prepare my kid -- when my kid wasn't even scheduled to take it. Calling to alert about start times changing next Fall --- that warrants a phone call? Six months in advance?
Last night's call just seemed like a PR thing to me. The information was in the media so the district wanted to scoop the press, before they had any facts. You say the principal made the decision to close the school? The reports I read say it was Public Health.
So, did the call allow you to make an educated decision?
Well, yeah, if it would affect your decision of where to enroll your child, that information *would* be valuable. I think it's a little odd to include it in a robocall, but not odd to distribute that far ahead.
Helen Schinske
However, on the very human, and the abundance of caution side,I have asthma, and a child with asthma as well, so I do appreciate all the heightened awareness of wash your hands, etc. I also appreciate the decision to close the school. I just wish folks who send sick kids to school each and every year would quit doing it. Sigh.
I would bet SPS will close down all the schools, as more cases become apparent over the week and weekend. So parents and employers better get ready.
In this case, I'm not particularly concerned about swine flu, but I'm glad I've got some time to plan for a possible school closure scenario in the coming weeks.
I still think last night's call showed poor judgment, but whatever. For anyone worried about their specific child and the flu, the information was too little too late. The Madrona boy who wasn't sick on Friday and was sick on Monday -- what did he do over the weekend? Baseball? A birthday party, the movies, the grocery store? The grocery store with the free samples? What did his classmates do over the weekend? We got some Eastside teens in Dallas at the International Robotics Competition. Danny Westneat just reminded us that Spring Reign just happened, bringing together teens from all over the Northwest and Canada. At least they were outside and there's not too much contact in Ultimate Frisbee. The Washington State Solos and Ensembles competition was last weekend. Thousand plus teens from all over the state hanging around the student union in Ellensburg for two full days. The whole world's a vector.
(oh, but the robocall this evening said to go to the seattle schools website for more information. too bad it wasn't updated with the latest closure data.)
I know everyone is trying to keep this in perspective. Hey, I have made the same arguments about worrying about 1 case of West Nile when 40,000 people die in car accidents each year.
The fact remains that quarantine is the most successful method of reducing infection rates. Historically, places that were able to institute quarantines during flu outbreaks are much more successful at reducing infection rates. That is why people are cautioned to stay home when they are sick. Hand washing is great, but I don't really think my children can be relied upon to wash their hands multiple times during the day.
It was a difficult decision to send my children to school today. They did go. I may make a different decision tomorrow.
Yes, but weren't those real quarantines? This one isn't a real quarantine if all we do is wait for the infection to be detected at a school and then shut it down and then just tell people to stay home. Don't real quarantines have curfews and National Guard and some real enforcement? I'm not complaining that they shut down some schools. I just wonder what good that does if all the other schools and gathering places remain open. Creating public policy is hard. I do not envy the folks in charge.
I do agree with Dorothy, however, in that while I am totally agnostic on whether or not the swine flu is actually something worthy of quarantine, I'm not sure how shutting down a couple of schools helps much. I doubt those kids will stay at home, and it's not like the kids from the schools don't mix in various ways (I know there are kids from my daughter's school who are in aftercare at the now-closed Stevens, so if exposure at Stevens is a problem, guess what?)
Death threats to a student, weirdo hanging around the playground/following kids home from school,sexual assault by a student after hours on school grounds.
I know that some of these parents are not informed in a timely fashion.
So what is the cuttoff?
If it is already, in the newspaper, then it is ok to alert parents?
Let's explore this a bit.
I read a recommendation (elsewhere, not on SPS site) that siblings of kids in closed schools should not attend school or day care as well. Makes sense, right? If you're trying to isolate exposed kids, then don't send the nasty bugs to the next school via a sibling.
But what about this situation where many kids at Lowell use the after school care at Stevens? Since Stevens is closed, should the Lowell kids who are in the after school programs at Stevens also stay home? Oh, but wait! The kids who are in the after school program are probably the ones most likely to NOT have a parent who can take care of them during the day. Ugh!
Let's think a bit further. Lowell is a bit unusual in that it's not only an all-city draw with young kids (harder to manage prophylactic hygiene), but one in which virtually every kindergarten (and preschool) sibling attends school in their home cluster - all over the city. If Lowell gets this swine flu, it'll be "game over" in no time for ALL of Seattle Schools. They'll be closed from one end of the city to the other. At least if they continue the path of closing shop wherever there are kids who are sick with this flu.
So how far should the district reach? Was/were the sick kid/kids in an after school program in the building? If so, should the kids using Stevens after school care be asked to stay home? Is Lowell a special case, and should it be closed because they have kids that use the after school program at Stevens? Are there any other schools with significant numbers of kids that use Stevens after school programs? I have no answers, just posing questions.
I'm just trying to plan in case they close down our school (maybe we should all start lining up bleach and rags and people to use them!).
Future humankind should live in sealed envirnments!
No one in the press or at the District seems to be addressing this question. And, aren't at least some kids still taking WASLs?
If they have to make-up snow days, won't they need to make-up flu days? Or, could the difference be made up in eliminating all the end-of-year field trips (at least on the elementary level)? Shouldn't there be a plan for this?
And...could the teachers use the Source as a means to assign some "homework" for the kids who are staying home? I hate to see so much instruction time lost to these kids.
WV: "readi" Are we? Ready?
It's not that it takes a week to wipe things down, it takes a week for the virus to run through its incubation period, which can (apparently) be up to 6 days. You isolate the kids, then everyone who already has it should be showing symptoms already, and you can keep them home/isolated.
This would probably be extremely effective if every kid was forcibly quarantined, but that's just not going to happen. Hopefully it will slow things down.
The big problem is that it's a new virus and so little is known about it. Why is it killing in Mexico and acting more like a regular flu here in the states? Why is it spreading quickly in Spring, when most people are generally NOT in tight, closed-up environments, coughing on each other?
At the end of this, the district will be blamed by many for either jumping the gun, or not acting quickly enough. But it's uncharted territory, there's no way to know the "proper" course.
Helen Schinske
Absolutely, quarantines are effective is they are enforced. Martial law and all that. But this is not a quarantine. All this will do is push the high school shutdowns into AP exam period, finals, graduation and proms.
Roosevelt already had a bit a flu season this Spring. My son was ill for about 5 days, two weeks after Spring Break, as were a number of his classmates and (IIRC) at least one teacher. He had had a flu shot in November. Still felt pretty crummy. One of his friend's temperature spiked to 104F. For all we know, those were H1N1 viruses, but who knows? I don't know if anyone was tested.
Elementary school kids don't get much out of the Source, do they? Likely not many parents are registered. And a school with 75% FRL, not a high expectation of internet at home. So missing the week is certainly a bummer.
1918 flu started in the Spring as well. An unexpected Spring flu surge that wasn't too bad, but then it came back with a vengeance in the Fall. Trench warfare didn't help things any either. John Barry's book was fascinating. We don't actually know the death rate in Mexico, so we do not know yet if it is more virulent there.
That's what we may be looking at: some seriously bad times next winter. Hopefully we'll have vaccines and other resources to cope. (Oh, and a good math text would help students be able to learn at home if schools are closed for a while.)
And can I clarify that the reason I was irked at the first robocall is that it provided quick but bad information. If it had just said "Head's up. Someone might have the flu, we are advised to keep schools open but will let you know if that changes. And please please if you or your kids have any symptoms stay home." That would have been better. And Emeraldkity is right, there are way too many situations where the district does not inform properly. Time will tell if they work on using it most effectively.
Ah, here's the CDC official stand on school closures. Note. Preemptive closures and 14 days. Sigh. Wanna bet graduations will be cancelled?
Yup, people need to be making plans.
Last weekend Madrona/Stevens kids might have been playing on those swings and slides, who knows they might be there right now.
So I guess the question is - if we have confirmed cases at more than one school - will the district follow the CDC recommendations or not?
Yikes!
However, as my 18 year old has been in India ( without potable water) since February- and since she told me that she isn't taking her malaria meds, since " they don't have it here", I am living in a state of wishful thinking.
I am also wearing a mask at times outside, because the pollen is nasty right now.
walyou.com/blog/2009/04/30/swine-flu-surgical-masks/
Helen Schinske
She works in elementary schools and a few weeks ago the flu was going around, and she hadn't gotten it yet so she thought she was immune.
Not.
She volunteered to take care of a few kids who still hadn't completely recovered.
Well she is better now.
I think just staying away from crowds would help- although I am going to a sweaty club tonight- but alcohol kills germs right? ( JK)
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