Barbara Ferrer: Boston public-health director.The city Public Health Commission is attempting to convince local businesses to not penalize workers who stay home for seven days either because they have the flu or they have to care for kids with it.

Barbara Ferrer, commission director, said seven days is the period required to ensure people are no longer infectious. "We really have asked the business community to help us with this," she said at a city-council hearing this morning called by Councilor Chuck Turner.

Also, she said, businesses need to trust their workers that they or their kids were sick, rather than forcing them to get notes from their doctors - because the medical system would be "doubled up" filling out all those notes.

Tom Ulrich tweets the entire museum was shut around 11:40 a.m. because of "an epoxy smell coming from one of the exhibits."

Music instructors are fighting a proposed law that would require them to sterilize wind instruments - a potentially expensive move that could benefit a campaign contributor to the bill's sponsor.

On Somerville Voices, Melissa McWhinney posts a copy of a call to action by Richard Saunders, the music director for Somerville Public Schools, and adds:

The problem is that there's no evidence that the current system is any danger to students, and the guy who invented a system to "sterilize" instruments stands to make a killing, while driving music departments out of business because they will have to spend tons of money they don't have, to fix a problem that isn't a problem, while the proceeds go into the inventor’s pocket!

Earlier this month, the Globe reported the legislation had been filed by state Rep. Paul Donato, D-Medford, one of whose constituents is Lorenzo Lepore, a dentist who spent 10 years developing an instrument sterilization system that costs between $50 and $320 per treatment per instrument, to kill the germs he says can last for long periods in the instruments.

State campaign finance records (search here) show that Lepore has donated $1,550 to Donato since 2006.

Nearly $200,000 in statewide grants help families cope with the economic crisis

Alison Lobron explains:

They wouldn't be new schools. Instead BPS would take existing, under-performing schools and turn them into "charter" schools - at which existing union agreements on seniority and the length of school days would no longer apply.

... "In-district charters," then, sounds like code for a school department takeover of the lowest-performing schools. After all, the mayor essentially will be asking the Legislature's permission to ignore the contract rules he negotiated with the teachers' union -- not in all schools, but in some of them. ...

Hmm, which union fought the mayor on salary freezes? And does anybody know if there are charter firehouses?

Mayor's statement.

Michael Flaherty's education platform, released today, calls for more charter schools greater parental school-assignment choice, and increased autonomy for school principals (Ed. note to Flaherty writers: Remember that a school principal is your PAL).

Meanwhile, Sam Yoon will unveil his own education position on Wednesday, focusing on increasing the number of seats in charter schools.

Flaherty said that while he supports the idea behind neighborhood schools, in the short run Boston just doesn't have the money to guarantee that all schools would provide quality education:

Boston Public Schools announce new principals for the coming school year, including a new principal for Roslindale's Washington Irving Middle School:

Arthur Unobskey, Principal
Arthur Unobskey is currently the principal of the Concord Middle School, but has a long career with the Boston public schools. Before arriving in Concord, Unobskey worked at the Dearborn Middle School as the director of instruction and at English High School as the Humanities Program director, school-wide writing coordinator and teacher. Unobskey holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a master's degree from Brown University.

Click on the Irving Middle School link below to see why this made both my wife and I go "Huh!"

In other principal news, Sandra Mitchell-Woods, principal of the Nathan Hale Elementary School in Roxbury, was named Massachusetts Elementary School Principal of the Year.

How come they never shut schools for regular flu? In any case, add the John D. O'Bryant School and the James Condon Elementary School in South Boston to your list of Boston schools shut for swinish reasons, Channel 5 reports.

That might also explain why, when I called the kidlet's school today to let them know she'd be out, they wanted the deets on her condition (no, don't worry, she just ate something that disagreed with her).

New York's public-school system now has exam kindergartens. Boston's doesn't. Further proof, mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea says, of how "Boston is so set in its ways, and afraid to try new things to make excellence for our kids a priority."

Or further proof that New York is home to some of the most neurotic, self-absorbed over-achievers on the planet, who somehow convinced the school department to provide special public schools for their special snowflakes. Or have I missed something and there really is a way to tell which 4-year-olds are destined to become masters of the universe?

The Boston Public Health Commission just announced it's shutting the British School of Boston on Pond Street for a week starting tomorrow.

The commission says it took the action after learning that 160 of the school's roughly 300 students were abasent. The school provides British-style education for students from nursery school to high school.

The Dorchester Reporter reports that the Frederick Middle School on Columbia Road in Dorchester was also ordered closed.

Also closed: Boston Latin and the Winsor School in the Longwood Medical Area and the Umana Middle School in East Boston.