When to Keep your Child Home from School!

Flu season is fast approaching.  It becomes difficult to make a judgement call when you know that you have to get to work.  After all, the company is downsizing, the mortgage or rent is due soon, and you don't want to join the scores of the underemployed or unemployed.  However, keep in mind that even wheny our child doesn't feel well, there is an etiquette that most schools would like you to follow:
1)  Don't send a child to school with a fever over 99.5 degrees
2)  Please don't send your child to school if there is cloudy. murky, dripping slime coming from his or her nose
3)  Don't send your child to school when they have the measles, mumps or head lice... (yes I am talking to you...)
4)  Don't send your child to school with diarrhea and then be bothered when you are called in the middle of the day.
5)  Don't send your child to school just because you don't want him or her at home!
And a wonderful child shared this poem with me during a "tell all" moment about how, sometimes, they just want to stay home.  Either way, it's a judgement call.  So use good judgement.  Enjoy! 

I don't want to go to school.l today, 
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps, 
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, 
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks, 
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more-that's seventeen, 
And don't you think my face looks green? 
My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke, 
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-
My hip hurts when I move my chin, 
My belly button's caving in, 
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained, 
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak, 
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth, 
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight, 
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear, 
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what? 
What's that? What's that you say? 
You say today is...Saturday? 
G'bye, I'm going out to play! '