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Thunder Bay parents calling on school board to change lice policy

An online petition has collected more than 850 signatures calling on the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board to change how it handles cases of head lice.
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THUNDER BAY - For one Thunder Bay parent, the issue of lice goes well beyond a child missing a few days of school. It can be an all-encompassing problem that is expensive to treat and causes high stress at home, which is why she is calling on the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board to change its policy on lice in the hopes of preventing more infestations.

Erin Kochan started an online petition asking the Catholic Board to change its policy on lice, specifically not keeping children who do have lice from attending school. As of Nov. 12, the petition has collected more than 850 signatures.

“The only question we had was why do they allow kids with lice to attend school?” Kochan said.

The petition was started after Kochan’s five-year-old son returned home from school last week with head lice. After reaching out to other parents on Facebook who expressed similar concerns, she created the petition, which quickly gained support.

“I’m hoping it will change the policy because if someone has lice and they are not sent home and not treated properly, for example, my child came home and I treated him, but now there is nothing stopping him from going to school next week and getting re-infested because it’s not being contained properly,” she said. “If kids are allowed to go to school with lice, then it’s always going to be there. It’s time consuming for parents and it’s costly, so I am hoping they will change their policy.”

The policy regarding head lice, or pediculosis, at the Thunder Bay Catholic District Catholic School Board states: “Students who attend Thunder Bay Catholic schools are not sent home or excluded from school because of the detection of active head lice or nits in their hair, as long as effective treatment steps are being taken at home to remove the pediculosis.”

The policy goes on to say that if proper steps have not been taken by parents to treat the head lice, the principal of the school, in consultation with the superintendent, may exclude the student from attending class.

For Kochan, the policy as it reads now does not prevent children from contracting head lice from other children and then bringing it back home.

“We feel that this school board is sort of turning a blind eye to it,” Kochan said. “They don’t seem to be doing any preventative measures even in the classroom. There are things you can do to try to contain it, they don’t seem to be doing that.”

“If the Catholic board is putting it back onto parents, that we are responsible for treating the lice, there’s nobody holding those parents accountable,” she continued. “There is nobody in the school checking that child to ensure the bugs are gone. We would like to see more of a structured solution.”

According to Kochan, it cost her more than $160 for proper shampoos and cleaning products to get rid of the lice, as well as being forced to take time off from work.

“They say the bugs are a nuisance rather than a health risk,” she said. “We disagree with that because it is. It is stress on a home. We’ve had people comment that it affects low income families. The treatment is very expensive, the time off work.”

A statement from the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board communication office said the board is aware of the petition.

“At all times, our students are treated with respect, dignity and where necessary, privacy in matters related to health,” the statement read. “A student however, will be sent home if proper treatment has not been administered to eliminate head lice.”

This is not the first time the Catholic Board has faced a petition regarding its policy on head lice. In 2015, a similar online petition collected more than 500 signatures after a concerned parent claimed her child had four cases of head lice in three months.

“Lice is all encompassing, it’s not just a little bug,” Kochan said. “It is a health risk for so many reasons. We hope the board will recognize this and maybe even meet the parents in the middle somehow.”

The statement from the Catholic Board said it will revisit the policy next year.


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Doug Diaczuk

About the Author: Doug Diaczuk

Doug Diaczuk is a reporter and award-winning author from Thunder Bay. He has a master’s degree in English from Lakehead University
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