to go or not to go

last week more than half of my pre-school daughter's classmates were out with a cold, flu, or cough. do i keep her home with a cough? if i kept her home every time she had a cough she would have missed her entire winter session. after carefully researching what to do and then getting off my but and picking up the phone to call the doctor's office (and then i had to sit sown again and wait an hour for the s to get back to me which is standard procedure in our pediatricians office), the answer was if it is just a cough she can go to school but if it is accompanied by a fever or runny nose, she should stay home.