More than 30 per cent of students are home sick with flu-like symptoms from four P.E.I. schools, but there are no immediate plans to close them.

Two of the schools are in the Charlottetown area, and two are west of Summerside. They are:

  • Westwood Primary, Cornwall.
  • Donagh Regional.
  • O'Leary Elementary.
  • St. Louis Elementary.

The decision to keep the schools open came after discussion between board superintendents and the province's chief health officer Monday afternoon.

Eastern School District superintendent Sandy MacDonald said each school reports on students and staff out sick each day. So far, he said, they have enough staff to keep the schools open.

"If we can't for example transport our kids to school or can't keep the school clean or can't teach the curriculum, then we'd be interested in closing for operational reasons," said MacDonald.

MacDonald said the fact that more children than adults are getting sick with the flu is making it easier to keep the schools open. It was a shortage of staff, he said, that ended up closing some schools in New Brunswick.

Chief health officer Dr. Heather Morrison said there isn't any public health reason to close the schools. Morrison said the flu is so widespread right now, closing schools wouldn't keep the kids any safer. But she added health officials are keeping close watch on the situation.

"If the severity of illness changes, then that certainly would enter into the decision-making, or if we learned something nationally that will influence our decision-making, certainly, we will be discussing that with the school boards," she said.

Professional development day cancelled

The Department of Education has cancelled a professional development day scheduled for Friday so that the students will be in school for swine flu vaccination clinics.

Parent-teacher interviews planned in the Western School Board on Thursday have also been postponed.

In the Eastern School District, Westwood Primary, Southern Kings Consolidated, Georgetown Elementary and Cardigan Consolidated will have parent teacher interviews on Thursday.

Students in Grades 1 through 3 across the province will be receiving the swine flu shot on Thursday and Friday. In a news release, the government says it wanted to hold the vaccination clinics as quickly as possible.