The New Hyde Park-Garden City Park school board weighed some policy changes Monday night that could help prevent the spread of head lice.
The changes, based on updated template policy from the Nassau Board of Cooperative Educational Services, would provide more frequent checks of students returning to school after having lice.
“Before a child even enters into the classroom, the first requirement is that they would have to report to the nurse, and then the nurse would have to take the time to do that,” district Superintendent Robert Katulak said at Monday’s work session meeting.
To that end, the board authorized Katulak to bring in substitute nurses to staff school health offices in the event that nurses have to check multiple students at one time.
The board also suggested school principals send a letter to parents if active lice are found in the school.
Katulak said the new policy is not much different from the district’s current measures. The proposed changes are part of a normal policy review “to see what could be done to be more preventative,” he said in an email.
The discussion comes after 12 students at Hillside Grade School and four at Manor Oaks School had lice at the beginning of the school year.
Katulak also updated the board on the district’s budget process Monday night.
He said the district’s four principals and seven administrative heads have submitted their budget requests, which the administration will evaluate in the coming months.
State officials have yet to tell the district its tax cap or deliver its aid package, which Katulak said will come in March.
Katulak said he is not yet recommending any cuts, but told the board it should prepare for a tight budget because the district’s tax cap has been so low in recent years.
In that event, he recommended scaling back programs rather than cutting them entirely.
“In the back of your minds, you should be thinking, in the worst-case scenario, what would you want us to do?” he told the board Monday.
The school board will decide in January whether to offer a retirement incentive this year. Offering the incentive would not cost the district any money, Katulak said.
