LETTERS: DOCTORS' CONCERN OVER POLICY IS VALID

To the editor:

I read with surprise the article in Sunday's paper regarding the Cape Girardeau Board of Education meeting I attended with Drs. Mark Kasten, Jim Hoffman, Jan Seabaugh and David Crowe and attorney Ben Lewis. We attended this board meeting specifically to express our concerns with the policy that students in high school and junior high school do not need to take final exams if they do not miss more than five days of school due to an unexcused absence. Our concern was that medical appointments after an allowed five absences did not constitute an excused absence.

I was not aware of this policy until this year when one of my co-workers experienced first-hand the reason this is a poor policy. Her daughter, a freshman in the junior high school, absolutely insisted upon going to school after being diagnosed with pneumonia because she did not want to take final exams. As most could predict, the child ended up needing to go home at noon on this day and proceeded to miss another day and a half of school.

The headline in Sunday's paper alluded to "doctors' ire" over this policy. This is completely wrong. There was not an air of ill will in the room that night but one of true concern about the soundness of this policy. A mother at the meeting also verbalized concern with this policy because her child had stayed at school while suffering from nausea and vomiting, excusing herself from the classroom several times to throw up, not reporting it to a teacher or school nurse because he did not want to be sent home. Why? He did not want to take final exams. Yes, he admitted this to his mom.

I encouraged the school board to examine this policy for medical reasons. As a registered nurse, I could never encourage anyone to go to school or work if he is ill. At the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center, our policy if for an employee to stay home if he is ill. Reasons for this are sick workers expose co-workers, clients and patients to illness and reduce job performance. There are the same reasons I feel the current school policy is not, in my opinion, a good one.

The health department conducts a weekly communicable disease report with both hospitals, selected day cares, physician's office and four local schools, one being Central High School. I compiled the data collected from the schools, and in all but one category there were two and often three times the incidence of communicable diseases at Central as the other three schools that do not have this policy. As I explained to the school board, this is not a scientific study. It is worth noting and questioning its relationship to the policy.

Finally, I hope all who read the article also will read this letter. Take my word that not one physician who attended the school board meeting did so for any reason other than concern for teachers and students -- not only the sick child who goes to school in order to be exempt from final exams, but all who are exposed to unnecessary illnesses because of this policy. To suggest the physicians and orthodontists attending the meeting were there for any other reason is disrespectful and wrong. To suggest they were angry is totally false.

From a public-health viewpoint, I have encouraged the school board to evaluate this policy and have expressed hope the board would change it.

CHARLOTTE CRAIG, Director

Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center

Cape Girardeau