Flu, colds boost LPOSD absentee rate

SANDPOINT — Absences in the Lake Pend Oreille School District for this time of year were five to 6 percent higher than normal Thursday, said  Superintendent Dick Cvitanich.

“I don’t think we’ve been hit as hard as some areas,” Cvitanich said  of an H1N1 flu outbreak that has closed schools in some communities.

Cvitanich attributed three factors to the absentee rate — the flu, the common cold and rumors that have fueled fear related to the flu. “It’s  kind of a combination of things.”

Panhandle Health District, which began its first round of school vaccinations Thursday at Farmin-Stidwell and Hope, ran out of the H1N1 vaccine at both schools.

LPOSD’s overall absence rate Thursday was 11 percent, with two schools posting much higher absentee rates, while  several others were fairly  low.

So far, there has not been a noticeable absentee rate among district  staff, Cvitanich said.

“We are in a good spot there,” he said.

Northside had the lowest number of absences overall with 3 percent, followed by Kootenai and Southside at 6 percent, Clark Fork Jr./Sr. High and Sandpoint High at 7 percent.

Sagle post a 9-percent absentee rate, while at Farmin-Stidwell, 12 percent of children were gone, while that number was 14 percent at Hope, although that school has far fewer students than other district elementary schools, which would push its absentee rate higher.

Washington Elementary had 21 percent of its students out of school. Lake Pend Oreille Alternative High School posted the highest absentee rate with 30 percent, but the number of absentees at that school has always been a challenge, Cvitanich said. However, he added that number of absences is high even for LPO.

Cvitanich said 302 people were vaccinated at Farmin-Stidwell before PHD ran out of the H1N1 vaccine. Some students and staff who wanted the vaccine were not vaccinated, he said.

PHD also ran out of the vaccine at Hope, although Cvitanich was unsure how many people were vaccinated at that school.

The health district ran short of the vaccine because it based the number of doses needed upon the number of permission slips returned to  the schools, plus a percentage more for those who might have forgotten their slips.

“People showed up with their slips during the event,” Cvitanich said.

Since health districts receive the vaccine nightly and the focus has been on getting it to those school populations based upon immunization requests, “it means some people are left out,” he said.

Cvitanich said he it not trying to be critical of parents, but attributes the shortage to people not realizing they needed to turn the forms in for PHD to get a proper dosage count and the increase in H1N1 cases.

“Today’s the first day and it will get better as we move forward,” he said.

Vaccination clinics take place today at Kootenai, Northside and Sagle schools, followed by Southside and Washington on Monday, SMS on Nov.  2, and the district’s three high schools on Nov. 5.