Letter: Onus is on parents to deal with lice

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To the editor:

Over the past few months I, along with many other parents in the Peterborough Elementary School second grade, have been dealing with a continued battle with head lice affecting our children. The school has been notified that there are multiple children currently in the PES second grade that are dealing with this problem. The school’s policy for grade/school-level notifications to be sent to parents whose children’s classmates have been infected with lice, which was recently changed in 2011, now states that these notifications are no longer necessary, that children found to have head lice are to remain in class and that screening is no longer necessary once head lice have been found on a child or after a child has been treated.

Recently, a motion to have the parent notifications reinstated was brought before the School Board and was briefly discussed — regretfully, that motion failed. So I guess that leaves it up to us, the parents, to have to notify each and every other parent in all of our schools to please check your child for head lice. Please notify the school nurse and your School Board member if your child was found to have head lice, please notify other parents, family members, and friends about this continuing problem, and if required please properly treat your child to help rid our children and our schools of this parasitic nuisance.

I apologize for being blunt, but where the school faculty, the school nurses, and School Board no longer feel it is necessary to notify the parents of this issue, I respectfully disagree and believe that everyone should be made aware of what is affecting our children in our schools.

Please forward this message on to other parents.

Timothy Derosier

Peterborough