Lice outbreak plagues Eagan schools

The head lice that ventured off an unsuspecting Eagan student's head last month have had quite a run of it. The tiny insects hopped rides on hats, combs, sofas and hockey gear, spreading from a few elementary students at Pinewood Community School to more than 150 kids at three Eagan schools.

The hair-loving bugs are on the retreat, but the mini-plague is unlike anything the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District has seen for decades.

"We've never had an outbreak this extensive," said district nursing coordinator Sally Cole, who has been with the state's fourth-largest school district for 38 years.

At Eagan High School, girls are still pulling back their hair with free ponytail holders passed out this week by school staff. Dakota Hills Middle School students aren't playing broom ball in gym, lest they infest one another with shared helmets. And Pinewood students are bagging their coats and hats in plastic.

Head lice, which feed on blood and often cause itching, aren't uncommon among school-aged children, but the 92 students who missed school at Pinewood last week because of lice go far beyond the isolated case or two that most district schools see in a typical year.

From Pinewood, which has 728 students, the problem "just seemed to grow and grow and grow," Cole said.

Younger children passed the bugs to siblings at Dakota Hills and Eagan High School, which have each seen a smaller number of cases this week.

The flare-up hasn't spread beyond the three schools, though 16 schools in the district have reported isolated cases of head lice this year, said district spokesman Tony Taschner. But other schools are taking note, with Red Pine Elementary, for example, planning to throw out its lost-and-found collection at the end of the week to prevent possible infestation.

Nurses check returning students to make sure they're louse-free, and most students are back at school. No students missed class at Pinewood on Thursday because of lice, while nine were out at Dakota Hills and two cases were reported at the high school.

Schools are asking parents to check their children's hair daily for lice and nits, keep them home if they're infested and treat them with a lice-killing shampoo or cream rinse.

"For it to get so big, so quickly, was a little unsettling," said Sam Broberg, who has three sons, one in each of the affected schools. Broberg and his wife have been combing through their youngest son's hair twice a day for weeks on the lookout for lice. For a few days, they even put his clothes in the dryer on high heat when he came home from school.

And when the lice spread to other schools, they started the daily head-checks with their two older sons -- though neither has picked up the bugs.

No one knows how the Eagan lice got their start, but some parents speculated that the pests spread after the entire second-grade class stored their coats together in a bin during a field trip last month.

Pinewood invited the Dakota County Public Health Department to inspect the building last week to make sure teachers and students were doing everything they could to contain the problem. School staff, more than 20 of whom got the bugs themselves, covered furniture in plastic and cleaned vigorously. Teachers cut down on group activities that would bring kids in close contact, and the school postponed a music concert that was supposed to happen last week.

The school is still encouraging parents to spend 25 or 30 minutes a day checking their children's hair, and will probably keep bagging coats until spring break later this month.