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Schools are actively encouraging parents to take schoolwork home for their sick children and promoting online resources so students can access homework and lessons from home.
Policies regarding when missed work and classes must be made up are being adjusted on a case-by-case basis at many schools. So are requirements on doctor's excuses.
And teachers are giving up planning periods, recesses and lunch periods and staying after school to help keep students who've been ill from falling behind.
"It takes all of us. It takes teachers, students, parents and administrators," said Diane Kreider, a seventh-grade reading teacher at Marticville Middle School.
A third of Kreider's students were absent recently for the better part of a week, forcing her to adjust her lessons and reteach material when the pupils returned.
School officials say such efforts have helped keep pupils on track this year, despite absentee rates at some schools of 20 percent or more, without the need to delay instruction or alter academic standards.
"We've had illness, students are sick, but we're moving on as normally as we can," said Keith Kaufman, spokesman for Solanco School District.
Like most other districts, Solanco has been hit by spikes of high absences in October.
Last week, about 21 percent of Solanco High School students were out sick, but this week the rate was down to slightly above the normal level of 4 percent to 7 percent, Kaufman said.
A similar spike occurred at New Holland Elementary School, where about 18 percent of students were absent last week and only 9 percent were out this week.
Some districts have experienced a rash of absences on the elementary level, others at middle and high schools.
While the illnesses don't seem to follow any pattern, they're consistent in one way, officials said. Most students are out for less than a week, missing fewer school days than they would had they contracted the seasonal flu.
"If there's a silver lining in any of this, that's probably it," Conestoga Valley superintendent Gerald Huesken said.
Another factor that has helped schools handle the wave of sicknesses is that relatively few teachers have become ill.
Most district officials say staff absences are about the same, or only slightly higher, than last year's numbers.
"Teachers tend to have a good strong immune system from working with students," said Chris Jahnke, principal of Mountville Elementary School.
How much of the recent spike in absences can be attributed to swine flu is debatable.
When absences soared two weeks ago at Jahnke's school — 115 of the school's 575 pupils were out at one point — Hempfield School District called parents to try to find out how many children had flu symptoms.
Parents reported less than 10 confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu, district spokeswoman Jessie Long said.
When 24 students at Penn Manor High School were sent home last week, only five had "classic symptoms of flu," district superintendent Michael Leichliter said.
As they have all year, schools are encouraging parents to keep their children home if they're experiencing flu-like symptoms and to keep them out for at least 24 hours after the fever has subsided without medication.
To further dissuade kids from coming to school sick, CV has canceled its programs that reward students for perfect attendance each year.
"We don't want kids to come to school because they're thinking, 'I want to get that award,' " Huesken said. "We don't want them putting pressure on themselves unnecessarily."
Hempfield, Lampeter-Strasburg and other districts have waived rules that require students to obtain a note from a doctor if they're sick for an extended period.
And all districts report they're being more flexible on when students must make up missed work.
To keep sick students from falling too far behind, CV Middle School teachers have prepared take-home packets of lessons to distribute to them.
And many districts are promoting their online resources, such as Moodle and Sapphire, where teachers post daily lessons, quizzes, study tips and other resources.
Teachers are sending work — lots of it — home to students.
Kreider said her team of teachers at Marticville this past week sent work home to six students each day.
"Whatever we can send home, we do," said Kreider, who arranges to have parents, siblings or students who live near the sick pupils pick up the material.
But many ill students — especially those with swine flu — aren't likely to get a lot done while recuperating.
That leaves teachers with a lot of catch-up to do when their pupils return. In many cases, they also must alter instruction for the pupils who aren't sick.
When seven of Kreider's 21 students were absent recently, she had to decide whether to proceed with the lesson or teach something else until the pupils returned.
She reorganized her class into smaller groups and went ahead with instruction, which involved applying literary elements to a picture book she read aloud.
Kreider sent materials home to the sick students but ended up reading the story to them when they returned. She also pulled the pupils aside during her regular class to help them get caught up.
"It's a lot of multitasking when you're managing students in various stages of completion and catching up," she said.
Many teachers have been using their prep and lunch periods and eighth-period enrichment time to help students recovering from illness, Kreider said.
"It probably means, ultimately, we're doing more work at home because we're spending more (school) time working with students to get them caught up," she said.
"It requires creativity in time management and creativity in determining alternate ways to approaching the assignment to achieve the same learning goal."
So far, Penn Manor hasn't had to deviate from any of its academic policies to keep students on track, Leichliter said.
School officials say they're encouraged that absences have been down this week at many schools. But they're not ready to declare the spike in sicknesses is ended.
"It's here, there's no question about that," Long said of the pandemic.
"Now we're wondering, where does it go from here? We're all just waiting for the other shoe to drop."
