Polo school to close due to COVID-19

Polo's Centennial Elementary School will temporarily cease in-person instruction for two weeks beginning Tuesday until Nov. 4 due to three confirmed positive cases at the school. school officials said Monday.

Students who attend Polo Community High School and Aplington Middle School won’t be affected by the shutdown unless they were notified, the press release said.

“The district has taken this step in consultation with local health officials in order to respond to increasing COVID-19 cases and quarantines,” Superintendent Kelly Mandrell said. “Our hope was to avoid a temporary shutdown, but on Monday afternoon we received new data from the Ogle County Health Department that indicated it would be in the best interest for us to go remote.”

Mandrell said it has been the district’s goal to provide in-person education for as long as possible during the pandemic, and she believes the shutdown will help it achieve that goal.

The school will be conducting additional cleaning and disinfecting during the shutdown. The district and the OCHD are asking families to limit interaction outside the home and monitor students’ symptoms closely.

“OCHD has been working closely with the Polo Community School District since school has resumed this year,” OCHD Public Administrator Kyle Auman said. “The district has been doing a great job attempting to isolate individual situations to keep students and staff safe. We believe that a two-week adaptive pause to in-person learning is necessary to ensure that we control virus spread within the schools.”

Centennial Elementary School is the second Ogle County school to opt for a temporary closure. Byron’s Mary Morgan Elementary School announced its closure on Oct. 5 and is slated to return to in-person instruction on Tuesday.