DOWAGIAC — With flu season in peak, Dowagiac Union School District nurse Suzanne Dorman is alerting families of the school’s illness policy to keep students healthy and learning.

Dorman, a registered nurse, with a master of science in nursing, has been the school district nurse for every building for more than seven years. Typically, she said flu season peaks in the district in February and March, but already the school has seen cases of influenza.

With an office in Dowagiac Middle School, Dorman spends most of her time in the building, but makes trips to the other buildings at least once a week.

“They always call me if there is an issue, an accident or something,” she said. “If they want me to come and see the kid, I go over there.”

Dorman said the school follows guidelines from the Van Buren Cass District Health Department. The school’s illness policy states children should stay home until they are fever free for 24 hours, without the use of any fever-reducing medications such as Tylenol or ibuprofen.

“We know ibuprofen and Tylenol will bring the fever down,” Dorman said. “We sometimes have parents that will give them the medication and then still send them to school. Once the medication wears off, the fever will come back.”

Dorman said the school’s policy aligns with the health department in that if a child has a 100.4 fever or higher, they are recommended to stay home.

“If it’s something that is strep throat, we tell them that they can usually come back after 24 hours of antibiotics,” Dorman said.

In the elementary grades, secretaries judge the students’ illness, Dorman said.

“Anytime anyone has a fever, we automatically ask that somebody come pick them up,” she said. “If they have thrown up at school, for the most part, we try to send them home, unless, we know they have stomach issues that causes it.”

At the middle school and high school grades, students call home and can decide with their parent whether they need to be picked up or not, Dorman said. If the student has a fever or is vomiting, then parents are required to send somebody to pick up the student.

In terms of medications that must be administrated at school, students must have a completed medication authorization form completed by a physician, Dorman said. Medication must be brought to the school by a parent or guardian with the authorization form completed. Forms can be obtained at the school office along with Dowagiac Union Schools’ medication policy.

Dorman also recommends parents or guardians call the school if their student is going to be absent. One reason is so the school can have documentation for its own records.

“If we see a huge number of kids with respiratory illness, then we know the flu is coming,” Dorman said. “The main reason we ask [guardians] to call in is so that we have an idea of what is going on.”

Every week, all of the schools’ secretaries report illness information, based on numbers only, through an online system to the health department.

“They are basically looking for obviously anything strange or abnormal, like whooping cough or anything that is a major public health illness,” Dorman said. “They want to know how many have respiratory flu, stomach flu or whatever the doctor has diagnosed the student with.”

Dorman said the health department sends illness information from the district’s schools and other schools in the county to the state of Michigan.

“The schools are kind of the first line,” Dorman said. “You can see if there is going to be an outbreak coming. If the flu starts to increase in schools, you can pretty much guess it is going to in the community, as well.”