At the beginning of the School year at St. Andrew’s, a lot of students had to call out sick, due to a wave of illness hitting the community. All of these cases led to a decrease in both students and staff coming to school.

School Nurse Jessica Goldsbury, talked about what exactly this wave of sickness was, with everyone worried about it possibly being a new wave of COVID. “Actually, maybe less COVID,” Goldsbury said, “There’s a lot more strep throat and there are also just regular colds as well as stomach viruses.” 

Goldsbury also talked about the number of students out. “I don’t know an exact percentage of students, but I would say around 5 new students per week have called out with a week long or longer illness.” Goldsbury said. “That’s not including the students out for a couple of days.” Goldsbury also expressed her worries about students taking enough time to recuperate from illness,“ I will say that people have been doing a good job of staying home when they are ill,” Goldsbury said, “but, I think people are worried about missing schoolwork, so they come back earlier than they should.”

It turns out that this worry was justified as students at St. Andrew’s worry about dealing with making up work after being sick. Sophomore Noah Eiland stayed home with a sinus infection for about a week, “The work just felt like it was piling up,” Eiland said “It was hard to get back to working, after feeling better, when there was such a long list of work to do.” Eiland felt his teachers were very supportive about giving him extensions and rescheduling quizzes.

“I was eventually able to get it all done” Eiland said, “It was thanks to my teachers all being very understanding and willing to help me get through all my work.”