Lice are low on general health threats – they do not carry the disease, do not jump or fly. But school systems and parents are still struggling with whether children with lice will be kept in the classroom.
Juanna Samarz, host:
Pediatricians and public health officials say that lice are low in threats – a list of threats to public health, but you can feel a major problem of school systems and parents who struggle with the idea of keeping children with lice in the classroom. Blake Farmer of Member Station WPLN in Nashville reports.
Blake Farmer, byline: Lice injury is an ordeal, especially in pre -school.
Unlimited child: Hello.
Evlin Thompson: Hey, Girl. How is your hair? Feeling is fine?
Farmer: Evlin Thompson knows how to disarm 4 -year -old children, so they forget that they tear their hair in search of bloody insects the size of sesame seeds. Today, she is examining her work, systematically cutting the hair of the children she treated a week ago.
Evelyn Thompson: She was the first to identify him in the group, and promised her that she would not be the only one.
Tonya Praison: By the time we finished, there were 13 children.
Farmers: Tonia Primon owns the creative youth enrichment center for daytime care. When the lice reached a third of its students, I knew that the latest recommendations are Nits as an inconvenience, not a threat to public health, so they kept everyone in school and faced the word four letters together.
Praison: It is not bad as you think. I mean, yes, we had a few children with them, and went to parents and siblings, but it could be controlled.
Farms: If it grew up in the twentieth century, no channel is politics, and it was sent to the house until you get a clean health bill. But 20 years ago, the medical guidance turned to allow children to stay in school. At this point, when direct lice are found, the recommendation is to notify parents simply. Catherine Smith, head of the Tennessee Association for School Nurses.
Catherine Smith: They can return to school to teach them the next day. It is important to be more in school learning than they are out of school because of lice.
Farms: After all, they are overall, but they are mainly not. Lice do not carry the disease. Do not jump or fly. So if the small heads are not touched, the lice usually remain in place. In addition, it takes weeks to move from one error on the child’s head to direct lice enough to make it really itching. The Dawn Nolt pediatrician, of Oregon Health and Science, authored a sheet of widely martyred in 2022, which was born a wave of schools that reconsider their policies that are not commensurate with.
Dawn Nolt: They were expelled on Wednesday when they had during the four weeks to the past six, he would not do anything, but this will take this child from school and shame that the child and the shame that family. I only think this is unacceptable.
Farms: Inclusion is a priority, even if it may cause disturbance or even the financial cost of others. Treatments that do not need a prescription such as gels, creams and shampoo are added, and professional assistance can collide with hundreds of dollars because they may reach an entire family. The tolerance of lice is a difficult sale, even for experts.
Nolt: I canceled the best friend of my child to the playing manager because this person had lice. You are like, it’s okay, just come. They were very embarrassing. And I said, well, just get the treatment. We will see next week.
Farms: For the educational areas that have not composed their policies, the second ideas revolve. Parents in Massachusetts, Tixas, Ouhayu and Georgia offer a petition for their schools to obtain a strict garbage, and the school councils listen. The school council in Hernando County, Florida, is back to their old bases. The chair Shannon Rodriguez said that she had seen families treating their children immediately getting lice again from the same fascism because other families did not act.
Shannon Rodriguez: What do you do as a parent, return them to school with the same children? It is just an endless battle.
Farmers: Stephanie Back is studying in pre -school in Nashville, which overcomes the injury. It’s scars.
(Soundbite of Toys Baging)
Stephanie Back: Because my daughter was really embarrassing when she discovered that she was the first to be examined and had. O man, it is difficult. You want to protect the hearts of your children.
Farms: But she says, you also want to keep your children free of lice, if you can. For NPR news, I am Blake Farmer in Nashville.
Summer: This story was produced in partnership with KFF Health News.
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