With school beginning again Monday at St. Charles East High School, things are looking a bit more normal.

Jim Blaney, director of District 303’s school and community relations, said Monday that 136 students were absent on Monday. This is down from 972 students gone on Tuesday, a number which forced the administration to shut down St. Charles East for the remainder of the week.

At a press conference held on Thursday 10/22, District 303 Superintendent Don Schlomann said teachers had been calling students from their second period class every day.

The number started at 45 percent of the school being gone on Tuesday. Schlomann said when teachers called and asked if students would be well enough to come to school, it went down to 34 percent on Wednesday. The number further fell to 25 percent of the 1911 students asked Thursday.

“We’re obviously moving in a very positive direction,” Schlomann said.

Kane County Health Department Executive Director said on Thursday that although they don’t test everybody for H1N1, the most seriously affected patients do get tested. By those numbers, Kuehnert said about 99 percent of those who experience flu-like symptoms have H1N1. Kuehnert said whether it’s H1N1 or the average seasonal flu, the way it is treated does not change.

“The flu is really the flu,” Kuehnert said. “The difference is the people it affects.”

Kuehnert said the group most affected are those 24 and younger.

District wide, Kuehnert said about eight percent of the district are experiencing flu-like symptoms. He said more details as to what happened with the school will be released this week as they further investigate what exactly caused the sickness to be so localized at East.

“Flu contributed to this, but it wasn’t the major cause,” Kuehnert said.

Schlomann said although schools that feed into St. Charles East that may have siblings of students had a higher rate of parents calling their children in sick, that has settled down as well.

He said  schools in the district have not been hit by sickness nearly as hard, saying most other schools have stayed at the 12 to 14 percent range of those calling in sick. Schlomann said this is a normal number.

Schlomann said the health department and schools will continue to monitor the number of sick kids. He said he can’t say what the precedent is for re-closing the school if the numbers were to rise again.

“You have to take it day-by-day,” Schlomann said.

As for the postponed events, the end of the fall quarter has been moved to Nov. 4, standardized testing for freshmen, sophomores and juniors has been moved to Nov. 10 and the Kick-a-Thon has been moved to Jan. 23 during the St. Charles North versus St. Charles East basketball game.