Schools are confronting soaring absence rates. Some are calling for parents to send their children to class even if they are not feeling 100 percent well. During the pandemic schools urged parents and children to stay home at any sign of illness. Now that the emergency has ended, guidance on when to keep children home varies widely. Fond du Lac County Public Health Officer Kim Mueller says every school can be a little bit different. “Since the pandemic happened I think more parents are in that confused bubble of during COVID if my kid had a sniffleI had to pull them out of school, and I think we’re slowly transitioning back to the way that it was prior to the pandemic,” Mueller told WFDL news. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends staying home with fever, vomiting or diarrhea, or when students are not well enough to participate in class. When a class sees high levels of chronic absenteeism it hurts the students who are there because a teacher has to spend time reorienting the students who’ve been away.
