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Illness closes Salamanca Schools

Salamanca Schools will be closed Monday due to "student and staff illnesses."

SALAMANCA, N.Y. — Salamanca Central Schools have announced they will be closed Monday as a result of student and staff illnesses.

In a Facebook post, the school district said, "In order to take precautionary measures and be pro-active, we will conduct a deep and thorough clean of our classrooms and common areas [...] Classes will resume as normal on Tuesday, February 6th."

This photo was attached to the announcement:

Superintendent Robert Breidenstein says between 15 and 18 percent of both staff and students have been absent.

"In a small district, when we're losing close to or approaching 20 percent of our front-line teaching staff, we started getting a little bit concerned,” Breidenstein said.

It started first with an absentee policy change. About two weeks ago, the district announced absences due to illness would no longer count against a student, as long as a parent sent in a signed note.

"Even a note under our old policy...would have been marked as an unexcused absence, and that just didn't make sense to us,” he said. “We want children with flu-like symptoms to stay home.”

Breidenstein says he hopes that eased the burden of parents concerned about unexcused absences, but then staff started getting sick, too.

With everyone out of the schools hopefully, custodial staff will go in to try and rid the classrooms of germs.

“The cleaning plan will include all of the common areas, particularly the high-traffic areas that are touched, including some of the computer terminals, the iPads, the mouses, the keyboards, the doorknobs,” Breidenstein said.

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