If you're a parent you know how difficult it can be when your child comes home from school with lice. It can be traumatizing and embarrassing for the child, and one local mom said her daughter is coming home with lice too often, and she's blaming CCISD policy.
Head lice is always a lousy situation, especially for 10-year-old Cora Tozier, whose had head lice three times this school year.
"I feel like each year she's getting it more often and more often," said Lindsay Garcia, Cora's mother. "This year being the most."
Garcia is left scratching her head every time Cora has an active case of head lice, because she's not immediately sent home from school.
In a statement from CCISD, the district said if a student does have lice, they are able to stay at school for the remainder of the day, and then treated at home. While the child is at school, the teacher will quietly send the student to the nurse. The nurse will notify the student's parents, and advise the parent that it's important all family members in the household be checked for lice. The school also notifies parents in the affected student's class.
Once a parent is notified, the student has one school day to get treated before returning to school, in order for the absence to be excused.
The statement also said students are not sent home immediately because "the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that a healthy child should not be restricted from attending school because of head lice."
"There's just not a sense of urgency here, but it's causing panic within the kids, within parents," said Garcia, whose spent nearly $1,200 for Cora's treatments.
When the child returns to a CCISD school, their hair must be free of lice, which is checked by school nurses.
CCISD also said classroom checks and mass screenings for head lice are no longer performed because it disrupts student and teacher class time, and they're not effective.
KRIS 6 News reached out to Calallen ISD and Flour Bluff ISD, who said if a child has lice, their parent is called immediately to pick the child up. The child is able to return after they've been treated.
