LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — As state announced three more people died in Arkansas from the flu in the last week, the Little Rock School District made an unprecedented move by closing two schools for two days while crews scrubbed surfaces thoroughly.
According to the longest tenured member of the district's nursing staff, there hasn't been a closing because of illness since she arrived in town in 1999.
"We don't take this lightly to close schools," said superintendent Michael Poore. "But we also want to do the very best to create a healthy learning environment."
That's why 181 kids at Rockefeller Elementary and 306 kids at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday.
The district provided pictures of contract cleaners scrubbing every horizontal surface in the two buildings.
In the latest flu report released by the Arkansas Department of Health, all but three counties have at least 5-10 percent of kids absent from school. Absentee rates jumped 10 percent in 21 counties in the last week. Dallas County reports 28 percent of the students are forced to stay at home.
"We're still on this side of the peak of influenza season, so it's understandable there's a lot of influenza in the communities right now," said Dr. Gary Wheeler, a senior medical consultant for the ADH. He said schools call his agency looking for guidance. For the most part, the department endorses their decisions.
"This is a decision made by the educators," Dr. Wheeler said. "We support those decisions because we know that the purpose of school is education."
It's also a decision made a little easier since Arkansas now allows alternate method of instruction days, or AMI.
"The AMI thing is really a great thing that the state adopted because it does allow us to continue to have teachers and students interact," said Poore.
The contractor said the scrubbing is 95 percent effective at eliminating the flu bugs, but nothing will completely sanitize the classrooms. Instead, the off days offer a chance to reset and re-establish how to keep the flu at bay.
"You know as a parent, you want to get your child plenty of rest, plenty of fluids, get to a doctor if they have a fever that gets above 100 degrees and keep 'em home," Poore said.