The schools themselves should remain open. The kids, and their immediate families, should stay away until no longer contagious.

I live and work in an area where the school includes students from who live up to 25 miles from school. And due to the recession, our schools are having to cut back on the custodial staff to save money. I believe the schools should stay open as long as possible. But often students don't admit that they are sick when they leave for school or else start to show symptoms after they have been at school for awhile. Our teachers are extremely dedicated and it takes a lot for them to be willing to stay at home when they are sick.

Schools should close if they have several students and/or staff who may be showing symptoms of the disease or else have been confirmed as having it. These days, the schools are not cleaned as well as they used (desks are not sanitized regularly, lockers are not cleaned, etc.) It would take our staff several days to disinfect school buildings and they are also at risk for the disease, though not to the extent that the rest of the school may be. To help keep the disease in check and from spreading to the other outlying areas that attend our school, there needs to be a limit as to the number of students and staff who have the flue before school is closed. I don't think it necessarily needs to be one student and then close the school. If you have at least a dozen cases throughout the district, then I think the decision should be made to close the schools. With our cold weather and close conditions in school, it wouldn't take it long to infect most of the students and staff in the buildings.

I think schools should remain open as long as possible. If you have 30 percent of your students absent, however, you should look at a possible closing. I would be more concerned if you don't have enough teachers.

Common sense has fallen by the wayside; the true pandemic. Circumstances should drive the response. A government "Guide to Thinking About Closing"; essentially a flowchart of driving questions to be considered by K-12 schools may be the key to the pig flying by or settling in at a trough.

The latest guidelines coming out from federal, state and local health agencies are backing away from the need to close schools. While everyone wants to prohibit the spread if the flu and keep students and staff safe, closing schools is problematic and may not have the desired effect. Who's going to keep everyone locked up in their homes until it is safe to come out again? Are we closing malls, churches, health clubs and libraries, and stopping air, train, and bus transportation?

Continuing to educate students via Internet or other electronic means while facilities are closed for extended periods, requires school systems to have fairly sophisticated technolocal infrastucture, not to mention the guarantee that all students have access to computers in their homes. Additionally, school systems will have had to have 100% of all teachers trained and using the remote system and be able to teach in this manner from their homes, in order to ensure immediate continuation of instruction.

Even if this could be pulled off, what would be the trigger that it is safe to reopen schools?

Schools need to take a proactive approach to Swine Flu while taking all necessary precautions. Schools should focus on prevention by becoming immunization centers for their whole communities. They have immediate access to nearly all children and their families which could eliminate a vast potential pool of infection. Outreach to the rest of the community would facilitate further immunizations by providing people with convenient locations to recieve treatment.

As a society, I think we have become germaphobic. We worry so much about preventing disease that we don't allow our bodies to become naturally immune. Wash this, disinfect that - all the while killing off natural immunities. My grandmother used to say, "You'll eat a bushel of dirt before you die." She had a very good point. Don't get me wrong, if someone in my class gets sick, I'm going to disinfect their work area. But once a virus is introduced to an environment, it is impossible to disinfect absolutely everything a person has come in contact with.
Keep your child home & visit the doctor if they are sick, but don't close the school.

I think schools should closely monitor the situation and not over-react nor under-react. My uncle was 7 years old when the Swine Flu hit years ago. He was sick in bed for so long that he had to learn how to walk all over again. If something as widespread as that version of the swine flu breaks out, young people are at great risk, and should be allowed to stay home from school to avoid getting it. If a strain no more dangerous than any typical flu season comes along, schools should not close. Hopefully, the CDC will have clear guidelines on what to do.

Ultimately schools should try to remain open and not shut down. If there are just a few cases of swine flu it may be just an isolated case and there is no reason to not continue with classes. If it is a few people in every class though, especially with the vaccine not available till October, the school should seriously consider closing its doors for a while.

Even if schools decide to close down with the spread of the H1N1 virus, don't you think it's important for them to LEARN how to prevent the spread of it? Who's to say that Swine Flu won't come back to their school, to their kids, to anyone they come in contact with. The virus can spread so easily through air and human contact that I don't think just closing down a school is the sole solution.

Here's what I think should happen. I think schools should take advantage of free resources, like this one: http://tinyurl.com/ksvo44 to learn about the virus and learn how to prevent the spread of it in schools!