NEWBURYPORT — Local schools report an abnormally large number of students are getting sick with flu-like symptoms, and parents are being urged to keep their children home if they have fevers.

In fact, local schools are sending students home when it's suspected that medicine is being used to reduce a child's fever.

On Friday, the federal Centers for Disease Control declared H1N1 flu to be "widespread" in the state of Massachusetts, with the northeast and western parts of the state receiving the highest reports of patients presenting with flu-like illness indicative of H1N1.

But as absentee rates rise at local schools in Newburyport, Triton, Amesbury and Pentucket, vaccines are nowhere to be found, and schools and parents are on their own to devise the best means of managing this quickly spreading virus.

Pentucket and Triton Regional, which are reporting absentee rates upward of 15 percent, are managing the exodus with relatively few problems, but officials are nonetheless surprised by the rapidity with which H1N1 spread through their schools.

"As of today, we have 92 kids out at Newbury Elementary School, 41 at Pine Grove, 92 out at Salisbury Elementary, 41 at the middle school and 88 at the high school," said Triton Superintendent Sandra Halloran yesterday, citing those numbers as an improvement over what she termed a peak of illness on Monday.

"The numbers are a little bit better than they were yesterday and Monday," Halloran said.

"Right now, I would say our attendance is running up to as many as 50 kids out a day more than normal," Halloran said. "We have a total of 35 confirmed cases of H1N1 in the district since last Tuesday."

Halloran said she's aware of two students whose symptoms progressed to the point of needing hospital care, each of whom fall into the highest risk group for H1N1. One is a student of Newbury Elementary School, and another attends Pine Grove Elementary in Rowley.

But despite the alarming numbers, schools will not be closed unless the illness creates a significant increase in staff absences, which in turn would make it difficult for the schools to operate safely and serve their function of teaching children, she said.

Those are guidelines cited yesterday by Newburyport Interim Superintendent Deirdre Farrell as well, who noted an increase in school absences that was notable but not unprecedented, and was not being witnessed at all the schools. At the Nock Middle School, where Farrell said the highest incidence of illness is occurring with 10 percent of students out sick, she feels there may be a variety of illnesses circulating.

"Some (absences) are attributable to flu-like symptoms, but there's other things going as well," Farrell said. "We have sore throats, we have strep, we have allergy symptoms and mono (mononucleosis). At the high school, we have no flu-like symptoms, but we have mono."

Farrell said Molin Upper Elementary is running at about a 6 percent absence rate, which translates to about 19 students out sick, as opposed to the typical six to seven students taking ill at this time of year. On Monday Nock reported 50 students absent, but that number had dropped to about 38 as of yesterday.

"The middle school is running at about 10 percent, which is high," said Farrell, who added that staff has been less affected than the student body.

But with the numbers growing, the school is stepping up its tracking efforts to be prepared in case of increased staff illness, and school personnel met yesterday afternoon to begin those efforts, she said.

A school in Grafton closed last week due to a staff absence rate of 43 percent, and that's the kind of thing that would require Newburyport schools to take similar action, Farrell said. But she's not seeing anything near that yet.

"It hasn't reached that threshold level yet, but these are the kinds of conversations we need to have," she said.

In the Pentucket School District, Superintendent Paul Livingston sent home word to parents that high absences due to possible H1N1 flu was seen in the Bagnall Elementary School in Groveland and across the district, and though Amesbury has been one of the last communities in the region to report influenza-like illness, cases are beginning to emerge there as well.

"We've been getting more reports of flu-like symptoms," said Amesbury Superintendent David Jack, estimating anywhere from 3 to 5 percent more students are calling in sick than usual. "We're seeing more activity, but it's not huge."

Precautions

Per the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the majority of people with flu-like symptoms, which is fever above 100 degrees, in addition to either cough or sore throat, are thought to be suffering the effects of H1N1 virus, due mostly to the fact that it's too early to be seeing seasonal flu.

Because testing for the virus has been abandoned amid an unprecedented number of cases, parents who observe flu-like symptoms in their children are encouraged to keep them home — even if it means they'll be racking up the absences.

In fact, one of the primary objectives of school nurses in recent days has been monitoring the school population for unchecked virus or anyone who has been sent to school who has had a fever within the last 24 hours. The message school officials are trying to send home to parents is, if your child needs Motrin to control their fever, keep the child at home.

"The protocol we've had in place since the beginning of the year is that if flu-like symptoms are identified in a student, they will be isolated under the care of the nurse until a parent picks them up," Jack said, adding that students will be allowed to return to school when their fever stays under 100 degrees for 24 hours without fever-reducing medication such as Motrin or Tylenol, following a check-in with the school nurse.

"The ones we're sending home are usually the ones who have come to school and come down to the nurse's office and are running a fever," said Nock Principal Barry Hopping. "We're real clear that they have to be fever-free for 24 hours and off medication, and parents have been very respectful of that."

Newburyport resident Amanda Phillipson has kept her two children — ages 8 and 10 — out of school since Monday, when they first began showing signs of the flu. On Tuesday, she also came down with symptoms of what she called a "bear" of an illness. To deal with the fever, vomiting and respiratory symptoms her doctor said are classic signs of H1N1, Phillipson has been following the directions of her doctor and trying to bolster the family's immune system with holistic remedies. The cases are so great in number, the doctors' offices have instituted a new protocol, she said.

"What they are doing now is that you call the doctor to find out what they want you to do, and we were told to stay home and push lots of fluids," Phillipson said. "It's the flu — there's not much they can do. They have high-risk cases they want to see."

Phillipson's son falls into one of those "high-risk" categories, as an allergy sufferer who required hospital treatment several times over the past allergy season. Though she'd like to be confident her attentive and knowledgeable care will be enough to help him through the virus, she's worried about all she's heard of H1N1.

"It's nasty," she said of the presumed H1N1 diagnosis, which is known to take five to seven days to run its course. "We're only on day three. We have four more days, and it could turn on us."

Staff Writer Liz King contributed to this report.