Many area schools are feeling H1N1 flu virus's effects

Watseka High School started out the week with a slightly higher than normal absence rate, but by Wednesday, one-third of the students were home sick with the flu. With so many absences, the district decided to close the school Thursday and today.

"It really wasn't a hard decision," said Superintendent Steve Bianchetta of the Iroquois County school district. The high school has an enrollment of 330, and 112 of the students were absent Wednesday. "Once we got to that number, it made it difficult to continue to have school."

Administrators at University Laboratory High School in Urbana faced the same decision Thursday morning, when they had 70 of their 310 students out sick.

Absences at Uni had been increasing all week, said Assistant Director Sue Kovacs. Most are freshmen and sophomores, she said. One class – world history for freshmen – had half the students missing Thursday.

"We have a lot of kids that take classes at the UI and are often on the campus of UI, so it's not a surprise," Kovacs said.

Administrators talked with public health department officials and decided to keep the school open. Closing the school wouldn't really help with keeping the illness in check, said Champaign-Urbana Public Health District Administrator Julie Pryde, adding that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois Department of Public Health are not recommending that schools close.

"The flu is so widespread in the community, closing the school is not going to make any difference," Pryde said. "Kids congregate at the mall or the movie theater or someone's house. They're not necessarily isolated in the home anyway. It's just not that effective.

"The only way schools really need to close is if they do not have enough staff to keep the school operating safely," she added.

With Uni remaining in session, 13-year-old Mary Evans Dickerson, a subfreshman at the school, is worried about falling behind in her schoolwork. She came home from school Tuesday with a 101-degree fever and has been at home ever since.

"They are lying in bed feeling crummy, and thinking, 'Oh my gosh, how am I going to get on top of this?'" said her mother, Elizabeth Dickerson. "You can't do the kind of caliber of work they want (students) to do when you don't feel like sitting up. Hopefully the teachers will be understanding and give the children a little extra time to get their work done."

Kovacs said teachers will work with students on making up missed work. She expected a lot of re-teaching in the classrooms with the most absences.

Absences due to illness in the Urbana school district have been up significantly, said Assistant Superintendent Don Owen. Urbana High School had 132 students absent on Wednesday. The average number of absences in September at the high school was 68.

Districtwide, there were 323 students out on Thursday. Normally, the district would see numbers of absences in the low 200s, Owen said.

At St. Matthew Catholic School, absences due to strep infections and flu climbed steadily in the last week or two, said Principal Kathleen Scheerer. At the peak a week ago, 89 of the school's 449 students were out sick. Absences dropped to 61 earlier this week, and they were in the 50s on Thursday.

Other school districts say they aren't seeing a dramatic increase in children out sick with the flu.

Robin McClain, Champaign's attendance improvement coordinator, said the district began seeing children out sick with the flu four to five weeks ago, but the numbers were relatively low. The district had 154 students out with the flu Wednesday, out of an enrollment of more than 9,000 students.

"We've seen an up and down," McClain said, adding that the good news is the cases seem to be relatively mild. "For kids who have come down with flu-like symptoms, they're staying home two to three days and they're OK."

School officials have been monitoring absences to see if there is any particular school or classroom with a cluster of sick children, but they have been spread throughout the district's buildings, McClain said. The district hopes to offer H1N1 vaccinations in the schools during the first week of November, she said.

The Ford-Iroquois Public Health Department says the closing of Watseka High School has bumped the health department up in priority for receiving H1N1 vaccines when the state gets the next shipment. Iroquois County has had three confirmed cases of H1N1, and one elementary school in the area is now being monitored for increased absenteeism.

Although Vermilion County health officials on Thursday confirmed that a Danville 6-year-old has tested positive for the H1N1 virus, school officials in Vermilion County said they haven't experienced a spike in absenteeism of students or teachers due to the flu.

"We've had a typical number of seasonal flu cases for this time of year," said Steve Runyon, the Danville school district's special education director.

"We've been very fortunate," added Cheryl Reifsteck, the Vermilion County assistant regional superintendent of schools, whose office is monitoring absenteeism throughout the county. She and Runyon attribute that to a little bit of luck and taking a lot of preventative measures early on.

In the Dickerson household in Champaign, the youngest child has recovered from being sick at the beginning of the week and is back in her third-grade classroom. The middle daughter hasn't caught the virus yet, and with a big swim meet coming up Sunday, she's not taking any chances.

"She's using hand sanitizer and praying" that she will stay well, Elizabeth Dickerson said.

News-Gazette staff writers Noelle McGee and Debra Pressey contributed to this report.

 

Teacher absences due to illness have been up as well in some local school districts.

In Champaign, about a dozen absences this month had to be covered by other teachers who gave up a planning period because no substitute teacher was available, said Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Beth Shepperd. Finding substitutes would likely be harder than usual – they get sick or have sick kids too, Shepperd noted – but the district's list of available substitutes this year is twice as large as last year's.

On Tuesday, the Urbana school district had more than 90 teacher absences, compared with about 60 on a normal day, said Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Gayle Jeffries. Not all of those absences are due to the flu – they include teachers on professional or personal leave – but many of the extra absences are likely due to the flu, Jeffries said.

The district has been more concerned with secretaries out sick at the elementary schools this week. It had to use the Manpower temporary agency to cover an absence at Wiley Elementary School, where both secretaries were out sick earlier this week.

"We've been scrambling a little bit," said Wiley Principal Barb Sartain, who noted the secretaries compile the daily attendance information the district needs, among other duties. "It is a little bit of a challenge to keep the routine going when you have people who need to be home because they are sick or have children who are sick."

The school also rearranged the schedule of a special education teacher earlier in the week to cover a classroom, because it had difficulty getting a substitute, Sartain said.

JODI HECKEL

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