Scarlet Fever and The Scarlet Letter

At the end of last month, my son's piano teacher told me that there were reports of Scarlet Fever in the local public schools.

Scarlet Fever? The Helen Keller disease? The dreaded disease that was a leading cause of child death in the 19th century, now in local schools? I think the last person I can remember talking about having Scarlet Fever is my 84-year-old mother, when she was a child.  So, I did what any 21st century American parent would do, I went online, hit my WebMD bookmark and read up on Scarlet Fever.

Well, not so bad, manageable; unfortunately, what brought up the subject were the symptoms my son was then complaining about experiencing, minus the rash, consequently, I was looking at a child home for a day or more.

Next day, sure enough, when I spoke with the school nurse  she confirmed that there were 'symptoms' that could be taken or mistaken for Scarlet Fever going around the schools and my son did stay home for a couple of days before the weekend.

This was not the first time my son had missed school because of illness this year, we have always followed a policy that you don't send a sick kid when symptoms first appear to school for obvious reasons, not only so the kid can get better, quicker, but also because you shouldn't expose the other kids and staff to the disease. In fact, I believe we are in compliance with Manassas City Public Schools (MCPS) policy in the way we aggressively monitor a possibly sick child / bring the child to be checked out at the doctor's.

So one can imagine my surprise when my Scarlet Fever scare a few weeks later turned into a Scarlet Letter from the MCPS. The MCPS Scarlet Letter "A" for "Absent" was a stern warning letter to inform us that our son was at risk of being held back if his absentia continued.

Well, holding back the kid with some of the highest scores in standardized tests in his class will be a new low, or should I say high comedy mark for a school system which apparently can't tell if they want sick kids in school or out; smart kids to advance or fall back.

While I can understand somewhat such letters, they take place in a public discussion of scholastic absenteeism and tardiness within Manassas, which seems increasingly oblivious to the reality that absenteeism and tardiness happens for perfectly legitimate reasons and that last thing Manassas needs right now is an overzealot school system hunting down laggards and slackers who also happen to be convalescing at home in bed, or hounding their parents and dragging them in front of the magistrate for a lecture upbraiding them for keeping their sick or possibly sick children out of school.

How ridiculous is it to propose giving MCPS policing powers within our families and homes, when it can hardly handle their own schools? Yet, that is what one Manassas resident just did. (See Rich Meyer's open letter in .)

Do we really want to aggressively start hauling parents in front of judges for tardiness and absenteeism in our schools?  Such a proposal is one only lawyers would show up to support, and just like in our medical care system today it will be the lawyers/judges and not the doctors who decide: Was your kid really sick?