The Board of Education seeks to provide a safe educational environment for both students and staff. It is the Board's intent to ensure that any student or member of the staff who contracts a communicable disease that is not communicated through casual contact will have his/her status in the District examined by an appropriate panel of resource people and that the rights of both the affected individual and those of other staff members and students will be acknowledged and respected.

For purposes of this policy, "noncasual-contact communicable disease" shall include:

In its effort to assist in the prevention and control of communicable diseases of any kind, the Board has established policies on Immunization, Hygienic Management, and Control of Casual-Contact Communicable Diseases. The purpose of this policy is to protect the health and safety of the students, District personnel, and the community at large from the spread of the above-mentioned diseases.

The Board seeks to keep students and staff members in school unless there is definitive evidence to warrant exclusion. When the Superintendent learns that a student or District employee may be infected with a noncasual-contact communicable disease, the Superintendent shall immediately convene a review panel consisting of appropriate staff members, the infected person's physician, and the appropriate County Health Department to determine if the initial evidence warrants exclusion.

If the evidence is not sufficient to justify exclusion, the person shall remain in his/her current school environment unless there exists a threat to the person's health or safety through exposure to other communicable diseases.

If the County Health Officer determines the evidence indicates the person should be excluded from the school environment, the person shall be temporarily excluded following due-process procedures as described in the District's administrative guidelines.

The District shall provide an alternative education program for any student excluded from the school setting as a consequence of the review panel's decision. Such a program shall be in accordance with the Board's policy and administrative guidelines on Homebound Instruction.

When the Superintendent learns that a disabled student may be infected with a noncasual-contact communicable disease, the I.E.P. Team will serve as the District's representative on the communicable disease review panel which will be convened within forty-eight (48) hours.

The rights of any affected student, as well as those of any affected staff member, shall be protected in accordance with Federal and State laws on privacy, confidentiality, and due-process. In addition, the exclusion of any staff member from the District by the County Health Officer's decision will be done in accord with relevant sections of Ohio statutes concerning sick leave.

Further, it is the Board's policy that all students and staff members should maintain normal contact with an affected student or staff member whose continued presence in the school setting has been determined by this process.

The Board directs the Superintendent to develop an educational program in accordance with Ohio Statute that will ensure proper instruction of students, professional staff, and classified staff on the principal means by which noncasual-contact communicable diseases are transmitted, as well as how they are not transmitted, and the more effective methods for restricting and/or preventing these diseases.

The Superintendent shall include in this program those educational materials which advocate prevention through abstinence.