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Image"It chagrinned a couple of parents," Lansing School Superintendent Mark Lewis told the Board Of Education (BOE) at their meeting two weeks ago.  "We received a few phone calls with allegations of over-reaction."  Lewis was talking about a policy that requires students and adults to stay away from the Lansing schools if there is a suspicion that they have contracted pertussis.  Pertussis, or whooping cough, is a highly contagious disease named for the "whoop sound that children make after a severe coughing spell or just trying to breathe.

According to Tompkins County's Public Health Director Alice Cole an outbreak of the disease is centered in Lansing.  The first case was recorded in Lansing in mid-June.  Since then many more cases have been reported in the county.  "There have been 36 cases since June 15, 2006 in the county, mostly in Lansing," Cole says. "The case in June in Lansing started the outbreak."

"When you have 1200 students converging on campus like this, this is going to be your common source for any type of distribution of germs and viruses," Lewis explains.  "I met with the Health Department's Doctor Uphoff, our chief school medical officer, in late August.  They showed me a grid where they were able to trace back to the spring, around graduation, that this was a source of people in the community acquiring pertussis.  The message was that we have to be far more diligent and communicative regarding pertussis, its current state in the schools and the community."

Lewis says that some parents have complained that the district is overreacting.  "One parent said to me that a physician was saying that Lansing is overreacting and this is just a common cold situation," he says.  "Well, it may be, but I don't know that.  I have to err on the side of assuming that it's pertussis.  I have a responsibility to 1200 students and 300 staff members."

Lewis is no stranger to dealing with health hazards in school systems.  There was an outbreak of pertussis in his last system, and he dealt with a hepatitis outbreak as a a principal in the Catskills.  "The county health officials get involved in that one, and they traced it back to a classroom," he recalls.  "It was one little girl.  It was the night before her birthday and she was helping Mom make cupcakes.  She's put icing on a cupcake and then she'd lick her finger.  She took the cupcakes to school, and guess what?  22 cases."

What Parents Should Know

There are many resources on the Internet to help parents understand pertussis.  Two that are helpful are


Lewis spoke of the pertussis problem in an August BOE meeting, noting that the Heath Department suggests that all faculty, staff and students be immunized against the virus early in the school year.  But he says a vaccine may not be ready until November.  Meanwhile, information about the disease went out in the first district bulletin of the season, and prior to that a letter from the Health Department's Karen Bishop went out to the families of soccer players in August.

Bishop addressed the school staff the first day, and met with the nurses.  "Our nurses and physician's assistant and I met with the Health Department so we have the protocol set, so everybody knows what is expected of them.  And they're doing it," Lewis says.

Pertussis is spread person to person through close contact when an infected person coughs or sneezes. "If people are exposed in this way and develop symptoms," Bishop says, "they should stay home from work, school and social gatherings to avoid exposing friends and extended family until they are medically evaluated and treated."  She says the best prevention is immunization.

But in the meantime, the school district is cautious about a disease that apparently began spreading on its campus.  "I don't know of any prudent school official who wouldn't, if the Health Department said, 'You have to do X, Y, and Z'  wouldn't do X, Y and Z.  Because if you don't do that and something happens then you have to accept the consequences," Lewis says.

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