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Illness update: 120 and counting
More than one-third of student body absent today
Published: Friday, October 23, 2009 - 11:25pm
URBANA— The number of Uni High students absent today reached 120, or 38.6 percent of the student body. This compares to Thursday, when 91 were absent.
Subbies and freshmen were especially hard hit. For example, according to science teacher David Stone, only seven of the 21 students in his first-period freshman biology class showed up. In Steve Rayburn's second-period subbie English class, only 11 of 23 students were present.
As to what the students have been suffering from, the symptoms are similar to swine flu even if the number of confirmed cases remains small.
"They haven't been testing, but we were told we have at least four cases," responded Assistant Director Sue Kovacs when asked how many of the students had H1N1.
All of these absences mean one thing for Uni students: late work, and lots of it. Director Jeff Walkington sent out the following message to parents today in order to address questions concerning makeups:
Our school policy for makeup work is that “students will be able to make up credit for all work missed during an excused absence. Students must make up work within the same number of days they were absent.” In other words, if a student is out three days, he or she has three days after the return to school to turn in makeup work.
However, due to the unusual situation of our high number of absences, I am asking teachers to be more lenient in the time they give for the return of makeup work. The best judgment of the teacher still prevails, as long as the time required follows policy, but I believe our teachers will be even more understanding than they normally are during this extraordinary situation.
Also today, Athletic Director Sally Walker announced that the girls volleyball Senior Night match at Kenney Gym vs. Judah Christian originally scheduled for tonight has been moved to Monday, with JV action beginning at 6 p.m. and varsity to follow.
The girls swim meet scheduled for Saturday at O'Fallon has been canceled, but the Class 1A cross country regional meet at Kickapoo State Park will go on as planned.
Walkington acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances of this week, which saw the number of absences grow daily: 21 on Monday, 36 Tuesday, 47 Wednesday, 91 Thursday, and 120 today.
"This is not something that just Uni High is going through, but also schools all over the country," Walkington said.
Currently, Uni High relies on both "the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District and the McKinley Health Center here on campus [for advice]," he said. "They still recommend that we stay open."
Comments
I disagree
I have to disagree with the decision to remain open. I think that although the teachers are healthy classes can not function normally. My teachers have been having to push back the due dates of assignments as well as what we do in class because of the mass absences. On Friday nearly every one of my classes had singe digit amounts of people. Excluding maybe 1 or 2 classes. Thursday and Friday classes were not normal and the teachers had to wait to move on to what they had planned. I think that because of this it is not worth staying open because when class cant function normally and when the teachers push dates back it is not worth it. Also by keeping us in school if one person comes to school sick how quickly can it and will it spread? I think that if they were to close school then the illnesses would go down, keeping the currently healthy, healthy. Also when we would return the classes could function normally and go on rather then having some what of a wasted class time.
On the contrary
You make some good points as to why they should close school but authorities are saying that from what they have seen, closing schools doesn't help. First off by the time schools make the decision to close, sickness will have already spread and most, if not all, students will have been exposed to one illness or another. Second of all, when schools have closed, officials have found that student who are healthy just get together or go to the mall etc... And essentially counteract the reason why school was closed.
yes, in terms of illness,
yes, in terms of illness, closing school does little. but so many people are missing classes, it seems better to me to close school until a higher percentage of students are in attendance, so teachers can not lose days in their school year to teach.
Mall?
Imo, the mall argument sounds weak-ish.
Mall is voluntary, if you want to avoid potential infection, you don't go. No one's really forcing you to go to the mall. School, on the other hand, is largely NOT voluntary; sure, you can call in sick, and avoid school, but then there will be HW to catch up when you return, so it's not w/o consequences.
Keeping school open won't
Keeping school open won't particularly help either, if extremely large numbers of people are absent. Sick people who are unable to go to school are not very likely to be going to the mall, or any other place. Uni students don't like missing school, and, as I'm sure you've noticed, come to school coughing and sneezing for as long as they can.