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Many parent's turn to Nit Picky frustrated at their childs school over head lice. We receive reports that schools are not sending head lice notifications home due to privacy laws or that not enough cases have been reported to issue the letter. Parent's are left feeling helpless and nervous that their child will continue to be exposed and contract head lice. So what is going on with the schools and their head lice policies?

According the Center of Disease Control (CDC):

"Students diagnosed with live head lice do not need to be sent home early from school; they can go home at the end of the day, be treated, and return to class after appropriate treatment has begun. Nits may persist after treatment, but successful treatment should kill crawling lice.

Head lice can be a nuisance but they have not been shown to spread disease. Personal hygiene or cleanliness in the home or school has nothing to do with getting head lice.

Both the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) advocate that "no-nit" policies should be discontinued. "No-nit" policies that require a child to be free of nits before they can return to schools should be discontinued for the following reasons:

Many nits are more than ¼ inch from the scalp. Such nits are usually not viable and very unlikely to hatch to become crawling lice, or may in fact be empty shells, also known as 'casings'.

Nits are cemented to hair shafts and are very unlikely to be transferred successfully to other people.

The burden of unnecessary absenteeism to the students, families and communities far outweighs the risks associated with head lice.

Misdiagnosis of nits is very common during nit checks conducted by nonmedical personnel."

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/lice/head/schools.html