Schools and Bird Flu

Schools get homework assignment

Federal health leaders have assigned the nations' schools a big homework project: begin preparing for the possibility of a bird flu pandemic. Since children between 5 and 18 tend to be the biggest spreaders of flu viruses, schools could be ordered to close to prevent spreading the disease. A school shutdown could last as long as a month, however, so districts need to plan how they'd keep their students on track. "Those are the kinds of issues that I don't think people have spent a lot of time talking about yet," said Stephen Bounds, director of legal and policy services for the Maryland Association of School Boards. "But if New Orleans and Katrina taught us nothing else, it taught us you need to be thinking about things ahead of time and preparing for the worst."