VERDE VALLEY -- With a little bit of luck, and enough vaccine, area schools may soon be ahead of the H1N1 flu pandemic that is already hitting many school districts around the country.
Vaccination clinics at all Cottonwood area schools are scheduled for early November. Even more important, none of the local school districts are seeing any signs yet that an H1N1 epidemic has started locally.
Kathleen Fleenor, superintendent of Clarkdale-Jerome School District said Tuesday her school is tracking absenteeism daily, and so far, the figures do not create any worry. She said that only one student has been reported with a confirmed case of H1N1, and that was back during fall break. There have been no others.
Fleenor explained that the Yavapai County Health Department has asked schools to track absenteeism and make a report if the numbers go above a certain threshold. She said the target threshold is .375 percent of the school population during a five-day period. That would amount to 140 absent students within five days for Clarkdale-Jerome.
"We have not exceeded that," Fleenor said.
Fleenor also said that the school keeps track of how many absent students are reported to have a fever. Any student or staff member with a temperature above 99 degrees is sent home.
Clarkdale-Jerome students will have a vaccination clinic on campus Nov. 5.
Mingus Union High School students also will have a vaccination clinic on campus Nov. 5. Principal Marc Cooper said information packets and permission forms have been sent home.
Cooper said that so far, the school has not had any confirmed cases of H1N1 flu. He said there was a confirmed case in a student's family, but the student did not get sick.
Cooper said that last week absenteeism ran about 35 students per day on average. This week, the number of students calling in sick has gone up, but the increase is not alarming at this point. The threshold for reporting absenteeism to the county would be 484 students out of school within a five-day period. He said the highest so far for five days has been 191 students absent, and that included a spike in absenteeism on the Friday before fall break.
Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District also reports that absenteeism isn't causing any alarm. Debbie Randall, school nurse at Cottonwood Elementary School and the district's lead nurse for H1N1, said she is getting a lot of calls. She said the schools are seeing a lot of sore throats and low-grade fevers. "Not anything I would send to the doctor," Randall said.
Randall said that the district has not had a confirmed case of H1N1 yet. But she also pointed out that many people with flu symptoms are not being tested for H1N1 because the test is more expensive than the test for seasonal flu.
Flu vaccine clinics are scheduled at district schools as follows: Tavasci Elementary School, Nov. 3; Cottonwood Elementary and Cottonwood Middle schools, Nov. 6; Oak Creek School, Nov. 12; and Dr. Daniel Bright School, Nov. 13.
Randall said that students must have signed permission slips before they can receive the vaccination. She also pointed out that vaccinations are not mandatory. Each family will decide if its students will receive the vaccine or not.
American Heritage Academy in Cottonwood reported Tuesday that not one confirmed case of H1N1 has been reported within the school's population. So far it has been just sniffles and typical cold symptoms.
Kathy Thompson of AHA said on Tuesday the absentee figures did reach about 50 students, with 44 of those being reported as sick. She said that with a student population of 322 students, the typical absentee rate for a single day would be 15 to 22 students.
A flu-shot clinic for H1N1 will be held Nov. 3 in the school gymnasium. That clinic will be open to students from other charter schools in the area and to home schooled students.
The clinic is open only to students, and all students must have signed forms that can be downloaded from the Yavapai County Family Health Services website.
