Rockford students to get temperature strips for home

ROCKFORD — Rockford School District administrators are asking parents to be extra vigilant in checking for flulike symptoms before sending their kids to school and are giving them tools to do so.

Fred Diehl, director of security services, said every student in the district will be given a packet of four disposable temperature strips to take home along with a sheet of instructions in English and Spanish on how to use them.

The district bought more than 100,000 of the strips.

Parents “can screen their children and have an idea, with these very accurate temperature strips,” if their child is running a fever, he said. “It’s our goal to minimize the spread (of flu) as much as we can.”

Students also will receive a letter saying teachers have been instructed to ask students if they are “feeling signs of illness as they arrive for class each morning” and to direct those who feel ill to the school nurse or office to be evaluated.

Teachers also have been instructed to move desks farther apart to the extent possible and to reinforce hand-washing and cough covering practices through nursing presentations and review of classroom posters.

Mary Fisher, the district’s health services supervisor, said absenteeism is running above normal in Rockford School District but said the additional measures were being taken “because of increased regional flu activity, not because of activity in our buildings. We have been very fortunate. I think we have been very able to contain this.”

She said the district reports absences to the Winnebago County Health Department daily — one figure for flulike symptoms and another for all other reasons.

Fisher said when a student is sick at school “we simply report the symptoms, contact the parents and advise them to keep the child home until they are fever free without fever-reducing medicines at least 24 hours.”

Letters informing parents of upcoming H1N1 vaccinations are in the schools now, but the required vaccine information sheets and consent forms are still being collated, she said.

“As soon as we get them, they will be distributed along with the cover letter to go home to parents,” Diehl said. “Whether (parents) want the vaccine or don’t want ... the vaccine, we need (the form) back either way.”

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