Our daughter was a first-grade student at Edison Elementary School in Eugene. Now, we're simply afraid to let her be there anymore, because she was exposed to the constant danger of being infested with head lice.

This problem appears to be permanent in Eugene schools. Moreover, nobody seems to care much about it. Head lice are accepted almost like something natural for school children to have.

We, as foreigners, are shocked. In our country, we have always considered head lice as one of the worst parasites that a human being can be infested with.

Our daughter was scared at school all the time, and she couldn't concentrate on learning because she was simply afraid of lice. It's really disgusting! And, no doubt, it is a very big emotional shock for her at such a young age. The American school turned out to be a direct hazard to our child's health.

We believe that schools should provide a safe learning environment for children. This is the purpose of schools! And it seems to me that here in Eugene they chose simply to ignore even such a serious a problem.

I wrote letters to Superintendent Margaret Nichols. In her answer she suggests home schooling as an option. Instead of taking serious and appropriate measures to prevent the spread of head lice in public schools, she suggests that we deprive our daughter of a positive school experience! To me it sounds ridiculous. Actually, it is nothing less than a violation of her basic human rights as a child to attend school. She now has only two "choices": either to attend school and be infested with lice, or to not attend school at all.

If there is a problem in a school, they should get rid of that problem, not of our daughter. She doesn't have head lice, she never had, and she doesn't want to be infested with those nasty parasites This is Edison's problem and the Eugene School District's problem, not ours, and we expect them to deal with it. Their salaries are paid by taxpayers, and they should do their work, should get rid of lice in schools, instead of just complaining about those tax-limiting measures all the time.

May 1997

This article was first published in The Register Guard, May 28, 1997