New soap dispensers await Minneapolis children heading back to school next month, an indication school officials hope to prevent new swine flu cases where they can.

But while schoolchildren statewide can expect reminders about washing their hands and coughing into their sleeves, they shouldn’t count on getting a day off just because one of their classmates has swine flu.

The Minnesota Department of Health and school officials say they’ll heed recent advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to close schools unless large numbers of students and teachers are sick.

That would be in line with how most schools responded when swine flu made its appearance last spring. The state’s first probable case of swine flu in May led to the shutdown of Rocori Middle School in Cold Spring, but as more cases were reported, schools began staying open.

State health officials warned this week that the fall flu season — for both swine flu and ordinary seasonal flu — could be worse than usual based on national forecasts of flu cases.

“Our goal is to keep our schools open and serving students,” said Nancy Kracke, a spokeswoman for the Eastern Carver County Schools in the southwestern Twin Cities area.

The district is trying to figure out how severe or widespread the illness must get before it will close a school or cancel activities, Kracke said.

“At what point do we not have basketball games or football games? There’s just a lot of complicated things that happen in a school district where we bring people together,” Kracke said.

Planning for the worst also continues in the eastern Twin Cities suburbs, where one challenge will be convincing parents to keep sick children home, said Barb Brown, spokeswoman for South Washington County Schools.

“It’s tough with parents. They have to go to work,” Brown said. “People need to give themselves permission to stay home, and we’re not very good at that as a society.”

But a CDC recommendation reducing the amount of time a sick student should stay away from school will make things easier for parents and schools alike, said Ann Hoxie, assistant director of student health and wellness for the St. Paul Public Schools. Parents of children age 5 and older are now advised to keep children home until they’ve been without a fever for 24 hours instead of the previous seven days.

Another CDC recommendation calls for isolating sick students from those who are well, which could be a challenge for many schools, said Cynthia Hiltz, who coordinates health services in the Anoka-Hennepin School District.

“Most schools only have one health office, so you have kids coming in for medication or because they hurt themselves on the playground, and they all come to the same room where the kids are who are sick and need to go home,” Hiltz said.

Officials are looking at each school building before classes begin to find ways to meet the recommendation, she said.

If they haven’t done so already, most schools are expected to make washing hands more of a priority, whether it’s by putting posters on hallway walls or having classes stop by the bathroom before heading to the cafeteria for lunch.

Minneapolis has gone a step farther, replacing all the soap dispensers in the district. The more than 3,500 new ones are tamperproof, ensuring that students’ shenanigans won’t get in the way of washing up. And building managers are being told to make sure bathrooms are always ready, said Craig Vana, emergency management director for the Minneapolis public schools.

“The soap has got to be refilled on a regular basis, and there have to be towels,” Vana said. “There’s no excuse.”