SPRINGFIELD — A local school district was not in session Friday, not because of inclement weather, but because of the flu.
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News Center 7′s Mason Fletcher spoke with Clark-Shawnee Schools Superintendent Brian Kuhn to learn about the school’s next steps.
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“We’ve been monitoring illness levels of students and staff all week long,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn says the number of staff who called out sick Friday was a breaking point.
“We had 25 to 30 staff [call out sick], including transportation, paraprofessionals, food service,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn made the decision to close the district Friday, saying they couldn’t stay open with only the available staff and couldn’t find replacements due to a shortage of substitute teachers.
“If we can’t fill vacancies, we have too many unfilled substitute teaching and support staff vacancies, we can’t operate this building,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn says that the staff aren’t the only ones getting sick, he has seen an uptick of illness in students as well.
“We had 159 students out yesterday, which is almost 18 percent of our student body. That number gets my attention,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn says it’s a revolving door of four to six students out sick in each classroom every day.
The virus isn’t isolated to schools either, the City of Piqua may have delayed trash collection because of sick call outs.
Clark-Shawnee Schools will be spending the long weekend cleaning.
“We are sanitizing all student desks, student lockers and high-touch surfaces, like doorknobs and restroom fixtures,” Kuhn said.
The district also put air purifiers in their buildings to minimize any sickness.
“We have our UV air filters running in high-traffic areas. Those are remnants from the pandemic days,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn says he will be in contact with district principals for updates on staff to see if they will be able to come in on Monday. Kuhn says they will make that decision Sunday.
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