Education Sec’y: Schools key to combating H1N1

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the nation’s schools will be a focal point of efforts to protect this fall against the spread of the swine flu virus.

Interviewed Friday morning on CBS’s “The Early Show,” Duncan said people should expect a “tiered response” from the federal government to any escalation in the number of infections. But at the same time, he stressed that decisions on whether to close schools must properly rest with local officials.

Said Duncan: “I’m dealing first and foremost as a parent. I want to keep my children safe and keep them learning.”

He explained “tiered response” by saying federal guidance to local officials would be aimed at keeping infected children home from school, and to close a school if the numbers of infected “escalate dramatically.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Swine flu is expected to return when kids go back to school, and the government is hoping its new advice on when to shut down schools during an outbreak will prevent the panic and confusion that led to hundreds of school closures last spring.

The government was to issue new guidance Friday for schools to follow when swine flu strikes. Unlike regular seasonal flu, this virus has not retreated during the hot and humid summer months and so far has infected more than 1 million Americans.

“We hope no schools have to close, but realistically, some schools will close this fall,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said this week during a forum with administration officials that was broadcast online.

The decision to close actually rests with local school officials. But those officials are looking to the federal government for advice about the new flu strain that has caused a global epidemic, or pandemic.

“The judgment will always have to be made at the local level,” Duncan said. “What we want to do is empower the local governments … to make the right decision.”

The administration wants to avoid the chaos of last spring, when more than 700 schools in half the states closed their doors. There are about 132,000 public and private schools in the U.S.

Students got an unexpected vacation, but many parents wound up scrambling to find child care.

School officials had been acting on advice from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which at first said schools should shut down for about two weeks if there were suspected cases of swine flu.

Then the CDC changed course, saying schools did not need to close because the virus was milder than feared. Instead, parents were told to keep sick kids home for at least a week.

Duncan said at a swine flu summit last month that closing school should be “a last resort, not a first resort.”

He said earlier this week that school districts should use common sense. “If you have one child sick, that’s one thing. If you have a whole host of children getting sick, that’s another,” Duncan said.

While this particular flu virus is new, the matter of school closings is not. Every winter, regular flu outbreaks prompt a relatively small number of schools to close for a few days because of high absenteeism among students or staff.

In addition to new guidance for when to close, the CDC and Education Department said this week they have set up a new monitoring system to track school closures across the country.

Still up in the air is whether schools will be turned into vaccine clinics, though Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said that seems logical. “We’re seeing schools as potential partners,” she said at the forum with Duncan.

Children are on the priority list for the first doses of swine flu vaccine, but because of time needed for testing and manufacturing, inoculations can’t begin until school has been in session for more than a month; the government is aiming for Oct. 15. Many questions remain, including whether people will need one shot or two for protection. That is in addition to the regular winter flu vaccine that is also recommended for children.

States and school districts should be preparing for the possibility of mass vaccinations, federal officials have said.

They also should make plans to keep kids learning when schools do close, Duncan said.

AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.