The newly developed school absenteeism reporting system provided important public health surveillance data to evaluate potential outbreaks or clusters of disease in communities and resulted in the detection of and response to 103 outbreaks of ILI that would not have been detected otherwise. Enhanced interaction with school nurses through the development of the surveillance system resulted in increased awareness in school populations about the influenza A/H1N1 (2009) virus. Furthermore, the rapid detection and response to potential outbreaks identified using the system may have minimized the effect of ILI in the school system and the community, through heightened awareness and implementation of control measures.