How Sick Is Too Sick for School? RSV, Flu and Colds Strain Parents and School Nurses
Tensions are rising between parents and school nurses over children showing up to school with coughs, colds and symptoms of viral infections.
Levels of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, influenza, and other respiratory viruses are surging early this year. The flood is straining school nurses and creating tough decisions for parents, who worry about children missing instruction and balancing job demands with child care. School nurses are pushing back, sending sick children home and reminding families about illness guidelines.
Some parents are sending children to school sick or returning them too quickly after illness, school nurses say, with parents citing an inability to take more time off work and a broader weariness from dealing with so much illness during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“They realize, ‘Oh, it’s not Covid, they can go back,’ and then they’re discounting influenza, RSV, rhinovirus, all the other pieces that fit to this respiratory illness puzzle,” says Jackie Follansbee, a nurse in the Yakima School District in Yakima County, Wash.
