Illness and Preschool Attendance
Early Childhood Education
Guides to Help Identify Symptoms
If your child has mucus of any color other than clear, they will be sent home. Refer to the chart below. If there is a doctor's note of a reason for colored mucus other than illness, the preschool offices need to be notified.
Please take a look at the Preschool Parent Handbook for more reasons your child should stay home.
Children will be sent home for:
- Coughing
- Deep, involving mucus
- So much so that they cannot catch their breath.
- So much so that they vomit (regardless of the lack of other symptoms)
- Vomiting (Children must remain home for 24 hours after their last bout)
- Fever of 100 degrees or higher
- Self Admission of:
- not feeling well partnered with lethargy, irritability, and abnormal behavior
- vomiting the night/morning before drop off (staff will ask families upon calling to check the validity)
- receiving medication prior to coming to school for not feeling well (staff will ask families upon calling to check the validity)
- Diarrhea (children must remain home after 2 loose stools and/or 24 hours after their last bout)
Children must remain home if:
- They are on antibiotics for an illness: If you child is on antibiotics for an illness, they may return after 24 hours of first dose, fever-free for 24 hours and behaving normally
- They have a pending Flu, Rhinovirus etc. test
We can only do so much to keep children healthy. Reducing the spread of viruses and illness is a community effort.
If you are aware that your child is not feeling well, keep them home and monitor symptoms. There is not a cap on how many sick days your children get. Your child will not be removed from the program because they or a family member is ill.
Be respectful of the other children and staff in the classroom. We never know who has an infant, elderly member, and/or immunocompromised family members in the home. Many of these illnesses could prove fatal.
All families take chances sending their children to school and believe me when I say we want them there. We also want to remain healthy, and we want our families to remain healthy.
As a note, if a majority of preschool staff contract an illness, the site will be required to close because we would not be able to adhere to proper Teacher:child ratios.
