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Ill students cause some schools to close

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Lake City Schools was one of at least three in Michigan that had so many sick students, they closed.

Health officials said Michigan is in peak of flu season and teachers are seeing that reflected in the classroom.

Michigan schools have to have at least 75 percent of their students in attendance on any given day for that day to count towards the year total.

Kimberly Blaszak is the superintendent of Lake City Schools. She said early this week, the administration started closely monitoring attendance following reports from other area schools reporting high flu activity.

“What we saw was from Monday through Wednesday a drop in about eight percent in attendance. Then students coming back too early that were still ill. We also had a number of staff that were in the process of trying to get over being sick or were coming down with it”.

Blaszak said classes are scheduled to resume Monday.

Public health officials said schools are not the only institutions seeing outbreaks -- so far this year there are more than 100 long term care facilities in Michigan experiencing outbreaks.