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Suspected swine flu shutters 2 Brooklyn schools

BY JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER | jennifer.kelleher@newsday.com

10:16 PM EDT, April 29, 2009

A parent walks her child home from Saint Brigid's School in Brooklyn after the Catholic school was hit by a case of swine flu and was closed for the week. (Getty Images Photo / April 29, 2009)

Two Catholic schools in Brooklyn will close for the rest of the week because of suspected swine flu cases, while President Barack Obama Wednesday warned parents nationwide that more schools may do the same.

Good Shepherd School in Marine Park and St. Brigid School in Bushwick will close Thursday and Friday, said Diocese of Brooklyn spokesman the Rev. Kieran Harrington. The sick St. Brigid student has a sibling at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, which has been closed all week with more than two dozen confirmed swine flu cases.

St. Francis Prep student Ross Pineda, 15, of Flushing, said he's eager to return to school. "I feel really bad. We are not on a vacation for a good thing," he said. "I feel pretty confident that I'm OK and that I have nothing to be afraid of."

Bishop Kearney High School in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn also closed yesterday after a student who may have traveled to Mexico came down with the flu, Harrington said, according to a Washington Post story.

Obama warned that parents should make plans in case "schools in their area do temporarily shut down."

Ronald Friedman, superintendent of schools in Great Neck, where a St. Francis Prep student with swine flu lives, said he will not close buildings unless Nassau health officials tell him to. "We're trying to separate the media hype from the reality," said Friedman, who also is president of the County's Council of School Superintendents. A student at John F. Kennedy Elementary in Deer Park contracted swine flu, according to a statement from the district yesterday. "The health department has also advised us that our student population and staff are in no immediate danger," the district's statement said.

Yesterday, state health officials canceled a disease surveillance in the Amityville district, where middle school students recently fell ill with flu symptoms, superintendent John Williams said. "We have no swine flu in our district," he said.

Long Island schools will continue to monitor the outbreak while reinforcing hygiene, superintendents said.

Maria Alvarez contributed to this story, which was supplemented with Associated Press reports.