One day, one of the child care workers, Laurie, noticed some…
One day, one of the child care workers, Laurie, noticed something moving on Ricardo’s head. When she examined it closely, she thought she saw head lice and nits in his hair, although she did not have much experience with these matters. She called it to the attention of the center’s director, who confirmed that she thought that it was lice. The center director told Laurie to inform Ricardo’s grandmother, who usually came to pick him up, that she must get him checked out by the doctor before he came back to the center. Since it was only 45 minutes until the end of the day, the center director said it would be okay to keep Ricardo in class until the grandmother came to pick him up. “If the other kids are going to get the lice, they probably already have it,” she said. The Red School House employs two Spanish-speaking child care workers, but one of them called in sick on the day that the staff discovered that Ricardo had head lice, and the other one was on a Caribbean cruise during her vacation that week. Given that Ricardo’s grandmother could not speak English, the father was unavailable, and none of the staff members could speak Spanish, what should the center director and Laurie have done about telling someone about the possibility that Ricardo had lice?