McAlester News-Capital, McAlester, OK

Local News

September 4, 2009

Illness forces closure of Haileyville schools

By James Beaty

Haileyville schools shut their doors today in an unscheduled closing that is being attributed to the number of the school’s students who are ill.

“We have about 70-something students absent” out of a total of 505 students, Haileyville School Superintendent Joe Caughern said Thursday afternoon.

“We also had a bunch that were sick and came to school anyway,” he said.

Plans had already been made to close the school on Monday for the Labor Day holiday. Closing the school today, along with the regular weekend days off and the Monday holiday, will give students four days away from school.

Symptoms vary among students, but have included nausea, diarrhea and fever, according to the superintendent.

“There’s no swine flu,” Caughern said.

Had the students been tested?

“There’s none that we’re aware of,” the superintendent replied.

A few members of the faculty have also been ill, Caughern said. He himself also had a short bout with the illness, he said.

Plans called for a fogger that is designed to eliminate germs to be used around the school today, including in classrooms, rest rooms, locker areas and “every room in the school,” Caughern said.

The superintendent is hopeful that most of the students will have recovered and the illness will have ran its course by the time school resumes at its regular time on Tuesday.

If any students are ill on Tuesday, Caughern had a request.

“We urge parents, if their kids have a fever, keep them home,” he said.

Meanwhile, at Hartshorne Public Schools, in the town adjacent to Haileyville, students seemed to be avoiding the widespread illness that struck Haileyville.

“We’ve had a few kids with colds,” but the school hasn’t had a problem with students running fever, Hartshorne School Superintendent Mark Ichord said. The school has hand-held scanning devices that can quickly determine a child’s temperature, according to the superintendent.

Thirty-five out of 816 students were absent on Thursday at Hartshorne schools. That included 27 students in the pre-K through the sixth grades at North Ward Elementary School, four at the junior high school and another four at the high school, according to Ichord.

That’s about normal, he said.

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