Dozens of Powell students have missed school due to illness this week, but COVID-19 isn’t to blame.

Superintendent Jay Curtis said Wednesday the number of students and staff sick with the novel coronavirus is “really low” in Park County School District 1, with only five positive cases district-wide.

But other illnesses — including influenza A, RSV and “some sort of a gastrointestinal issue” — have hit Southside Elementary School and Powell High School particularly hard.

At PHS, 81 students were absent Wednesday; of those, 61 reported being ill, said Principal Tim Wormald. Meanwhile, Southside had about 90 students absent Wednesday, with 87 of those absences related to illness, Curtis said.

“At Southside, interestingly enough, they have all kinds of other stuff going through, but they have one positive case [of COVID] and no quarantines,” the superintendent said.

At the beginning of the year, school nurses had warned Curtis that, because schools didn’t see cases of the common cold, flu or other typical illnesses circulate last year, this season would likely be hard.

“Well, it almost seems prophetic at this point, because right now we're getting hit pretty hard,” Curtis said.

With Christmas just around the corner, the superintendent said he thinks the two-week break starting Wednesday “is going to be a huge help for us to just get people spread out a little bit.”

Schools are reminding families to keep kids home if they are sick.

“I would just implore parents that if your child is exhibiting any symptoms whatsoever to just keep them home,” Curtis said. “Let's not spread this to more people … stay home and get well.”

Park 1 has a pandemic flu policy — which predates the COVID-19 pandemic — that leaders are observing carefully. Right now, the district is in the heightened monitoring stage, where the superintendent requires all of the schools to report absences to him on a daily basis.

“If we get to 30% [of students absent] districtwide, then we have to cancel school. We're not anywhere remotely close to that at this point,” Curtis said. 

The school district was close to reaching about 10% of students absent, prompting the heightened state of monitoring, and notified parents in the schools that were hardest hit.

While Southside had about 29% of students out on Wednesday, other schools reported far fewer absences. For example, only 5.7% of students were absent due to illness at Westside Elementary School, while Powell Middle School had roughly 11% of its students out.

Those percentages “are not uncommon for a year where you get some flu running through,” Curtis said.

Meanwhile, at Parkside Elementary School, only eight students were out due to illness on Wednesday.

Southside’s spike in illnesses occurred after the school’s Christmas program, leading some to wonder if that’s how the sickness spread, but “it's speculation on my part to think that it's that,” Curtis said.

Schools are continuing to follow heightened cleaning practices this year under protocols to limit the spread of COVID-19.