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Flu Guidelines Offer Districts More Flexibility

Swine flu didn’t hit the 3,700-student Burlington, Vt., school district until just before the most recent school year ended—but fearful parents still considered pulling their children from classes with a day or two to go, recalls Superintendent Jeanne Collins.

Now, thanks to new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ms. Collins and other school administrators have clear directions for how to handle the cases of H1N1 flu virus that are all but certain to appear in schools this fall. First among them: Closing school is not always necessary.

The Atlanta-based CDC now believes this strain of flu is comparable in severity to what schools would encounter with a typical seasonal flu, which does not usually force school closures. In most cases, students and employees can return to school when they’ve been fever-free for 24 hours, according to Dr. Thomas R....