Dear Gordon Community,

We were delighted to see so many of you at the flu vaccine clinic last week. I am glad caregivers are doing what they can to keep students healthy and that the school is finding ways to support you in that effort. Thank you for your partnership!

As we move into the cold and flu season, our Health Services team is doing everything it can to keep our students happy, healthy, and in school every day. Caregivers are key partners in this work, and Nurse Kinsman and I want to review a few policies and recommendations that will help us get through the winter months.


Head lice

Head lice is an especially provocative topic in any school or youth program – they are highly contagious, and their presence is highly charged emotionally, even though the lice themselves do not pose any dramatic health risk. 

We have had a number of cases in the past few weeks, and I asked our team for a full review of all of Gordon's detection, treatment, and prevention procedures. So that we are all on the same page in this work, I invite you to take a look at the full policy at www.gordonschool.org/lice. Please note that a few of these protocols have been recently tweaked to improve hygiene and student privacy.

Our approach emphasizes empathy, student privacy, evidence-based management, and open communication with families. If you can't read the full policy now, your need-to-knows include these bullet points:

• Symptoms may be very minor, and direct scalp checks are the only way to be certain

• If the school nurse finds lice on a child, the child will be sent home

• A child may not return to school with active lice

• When a case is identified, the nurse will notify the entire division in which the child is enrolled, instead of just the individual class

• The Buildings and Grounds team has a well-defined and thorough protocol for disinfecting spaces used by the child who has lice

These and other specifics of the protocol are aimed at balancing student health and student privacy.


When else should my child stay home?

This decision can be difficult to make when packing up the family in the morning, but your choice can make a huge difference, both for your child and for their classmates.

Gordon has a very simple checklist to help you make that call. If a child has one of the following symptoms, they need to stay home:

• A new or unexplained cough that doesn’t go away
  
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
  
• Fever at or above 100.4
  
• Vomiting or diarrhea within the last 24 hours
  
• Signs of an eye infection - redness, oozing, or yellow/green discharge

If a child has two or more of the following symptoms, they need to stay home:


• Headache
  
• Sore throat
  
• Nasal congestion
  
• Muscle or body aches
  
• Nausea
  
• Fatigue
  

These bullet points are also used in the health office to determine whether your child is sent home. If your child has health concerns in the morning, please look over this list. It can also be found at www.gordonschool.org/nurse. 


Reinforce classroom lessons

Beginning in Early Childhood, Gordon is teaching healthy habits. Your child should be familiar with handwashing habits, before and after eating, and the importance of covering the mouth and nose when sneezing or coughing. These basics are important. Please repeat them at home!

See you soon?

Student health is crucial, but, honestly, there are so many other things I'd like to be writing to you about. The Cross Country Blue team qualified for states. Don Mays is working with the Middle School on two productions simultaneously this fall. Ages and Stages and Coffees in the Commons have been packed. Our Halloween parade is next Friday (8:15 a.m.!), our Open House is the next day, and author Jennifer deLeon is spending the day with us on November 10th.

All of these things are happening, and our students’ health, safety, and emotional well-being are critical parts of each one. Thank you for your partnership in this essential aspect of our work.

In community,