December 17, 2013 at 12:19 p.m.
Crescent and Pelican schools reopen after cleaning
High rate of illness-related absences forced closures last week
Crescent and Pelican schools reopen after cleaning
School and health officials announced the closure of Pelican Elementary School last Thursday afternoon, citing a high number of illness-related absences - over the 20 percent mark used as a cutoff point by the district.
Then, at approximately 10 a.m. Friday, the district announced Crescent Elementary School would also close for the day for the same reason.
Over the weekend the two schools, and Central Intermediate School, were thoroughly cleaned, according to Superintendent Kelli Jacobi.
Bowen's Bus Service also disinfected all of the buses used by the district.
"We got Crescent, Pelican, and Central all disinfected over the weekend," Jacobi said. "Bowen's took care of the buses. All schools are back in session."
Jacobi said Central was disinfected because there are a number of siblings of elementary students enrolled there.
"There are a lot of siblings there and (Central officials) were starting to see their numbers creep up. It never got to the point of Crescent and Pelican because often it's the little kids that get sicker faster - their systems get compromised more easily. We were starting to see some signs so we went ahead and got it done, too," Jacobi said. "We don't want the healthy kids coming back to school to a building that isn't disinfected."
There are still high numbers of absences at the elementary schools, but Jacobi said that is likely due to parents keeping their sick kids home for a longer period of time to make sure they have recovered completely, a practice district nurse Kerri Schmidt has suggested.
Schmidt advises any individuals with influenza-like illness (fever with a cough or sore throat) or gastrointestinal symptoms (nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea) to stay home and not go into the community, except to seek medical care. Ill individuals should remain home for 48 hours after their symptoms have subsided, she said.
"We do still have high numbers of absentee students at both Pelican and Crescent, but the difference is that they followed the school nurse's directions and (parents are keeping) the sick kids home," Jacobi said.
"We haven't had huge numbers leaving school sick, so as long as we can keep it that way, we're good to go. If we start having huge numbers of students leaving during the school day sick, that's when we're going to have to go back to the drawing board and figure out if we need to be making changes."
As for the other schools in the district, Jacobi said the numbers are high, but not to the point where officials will start discussing the need to close any schools.
"It doesn't appear to be a problem at the other schools. It's higher than normal, but it's a community problem, it's not just the schools. They're seeing higher numbers at the clinics, but (the other schools are) nowhere near even the 10 percent mark. So some of the bigger siblings are getting sick, but it doesn't seem to be as sick or for as long as the younger kids can be sick. The numbers are just smaller," Jacobi said.
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
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