Today 121 students were absent from Hobe Sound Elementary School, officials said, two days after the absence of dozens of students prompted health officials to investigate if children got sick at the school.

School district officials don’t know whether the students who missed school today were absent due to illness or were left at home by parents who didn’t want them attending the school after it reported Wednesday’s unusually high number of absences.

On Thursday, 124 of the school’s 715 students were absent, Martin school district spokeswoman Cathy Brennan said.

The day before, 118 were absent, while another 24 children went home early, complaining of nausea and vomiting, Brennan said.

The Martin County Health Department is interviewing parents of the students to help determine what caused the illness. They are also waiting lab results on two samples of vomit to determine whether a virus might have been the cause. These could come in as early as the end of today, or on Monday.

The school has also been doing extra cleaning in the classrooms as a preventative measure, Brennan said.

Ana X. Ceron, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tags: elementary, Health, Hobe Sound, illness, nausea

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Hobe Sound, Schools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.