Dear Parents,

The schools throughout our district realize the importance of keeping your child safe, happy, and ready to learn throughout the school year. In order to achieve this goal, we all need to work together.  All of our district's children come to school with their own personal history. For some of our children, part of that history includes special healthcare needs. If you have a child who has any sort of health problems, please make the time to come to school and talk with the school nurse. Tell us about your child and work with the nurse to get the needed health information and physician orders on file so that together we can plan to take good care of your child at school.

We also would like to take this opportunity to ask all parents to teach your children to be considerate of classmates' unique healthcare needs. Because some of their classmates may have chronic health problems or severe food allergies there are rules in school like "no sharing food" or "no eating on the bus".  Rules help keep everyone safe. Teach them also that it is most important to wash their hands often, especially before and after eating to reduce the spread of infection and allergen contamination. If your child is in a class with a student with severe food allergies, you will receive, soon after school starts, a letter with specific suggestions to help keep that student safe.

In addition, as we all come back to routines after vacation travels and playing outside, this is a good time to also emphasize the importance of taking time each day to check your children for deer ticks which can cause lyme disease, a serious illness. At the same time you can inspect their hair for lice a basically harmless nuisance, but difficult to eliminate once overlooked. The school nurses are good sources of information on any of these topics and are happy to answer questions

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and comply with our requests.  We hope your family enjoys the vacation time that is left, and we look forward to greeting your children and welcoming them to school.

Sincerely,

Kathy Mignone, RN, MS
School Health Supervisor