Bites lead school to spray for ticks

Six students at Pine View Elementary School in Land O' Lakes were bitten by ticks this month, according to the Pasco County school district. Assistant Superintendent David Scanga thought the children might have picked up the ticks on the playground, so after the school discovered the problem, the campus was sprayed to get rid of the parasites.

"Once we knew of the problem, treatment happened very quickly, and since that time there hasn't been a single case," Scanga said.

The school contacted the parents of the students who were bitten, telling them about the situation.

"These are individual cases and we called all the parents, informed them, made sure they had some guidance as to what they should do," he said.

However, some parents don't feel the district did enough to protect students. The school did not send home a letter telling parents to check their kids for ticks.

Principal Cortney Gantt sent an e-mail to staff encouraging them not to discuss the ticks with parents, writing, "Please refrain from talking about this in front of parents, as they are now in a panic and think this is an ongoing problem."

Keli Higgins has a second-grader at Pine View. She was shocked when she heard students were bitten by ticks.

"That's scary; that's terrible," she said. "We're a little shocked. Now, when my son gets home, I'm going to check and see if he's got ticks."

Higgins said she's used to bugs and wildlife near her Pasco County home, but worries about the threat of Lyme disease, which can be carried by ticks.

"If we'd have gotten a letter, we would have checked him out. And I would have called the school to at least ask some questions," Higgins said. "I would have just wanted to know what's going on."

When Higgins heard about the tick problem, she said her No. 1 concern was Lyme disease.

According to the University of Florida, there is a low risk of Lyme disease infection in Florida. There have been 30-50 cases diagnosed a year, but half of those are thought to have been contracted outside the state. Lyme disease is more prevalent in the Northeast. New York, for example, has as many as 5,000 cases each year.

Its symptoms include a red, bulls-eye mark where the bite occurred, as well as other flulike symptoms, which show up within three days to three weeks of the bite.

The school district stands by the principal's decision not to send a letter home with students. Scanga said the district decided to deal with parents on a case-by-case basis.

"In this particular situation, it wasn't large numbers, it was very small numbers and they were dealt with as individual incidences," he said.

Scanga compared the tick infestation to any other appearance of biting or stinging bugs on the playground.

"We have on our school campuses where you get wasps or you get red ants or you get ticks," he said. "And when that happens you try to isolate the area and you do a treatment to eradicate them."

Scanga said there haven't been any more ticks since the treatment.

Higgins, however, said the school should have notified parents, just to be safe.

"They seem to send a letter home for everything, anything else," she said. "But to not send a letter home for that - that's wrong."