“Unofficial prom” leads to 10 positive COVID-19 cases in Mahomet, Hall: “I want to learn from this”

Ten Mahomet-Seymour students have tested positive for COVID-19 after a non-school sanctioned “prom” on June 13. 

Mahomet-Seymour Superintendent Lindsey Hall said that late last week the district was notified that one student had tested positive. Because the student was part of the summer behind-the-wheel program, the district notified district parents via email, but decided to continue athletic events and summer in-person programming. The information the district had at the time did not suggest that anything different needed to happen.

“We looked at our position last week and decided we do need to put out some communication about this,” Hall said. “But we also need to respect the privacy of identifiable people.”

By Monday morning, Hall learned of a rumored “prom,” hosted by community parents, that may have included up to 40 people.

As she learned more about what may have taken place, and that there may be more students infected, Hall, Mahomet-Seymour Principal Chad Benedict and Athletic Director Matt Hensley decided that it was time to engage with the Champaign-Urbana Public Health Department. 

“Hearing about cases is not the same as the public health department confirming more cases,” she said. “There is a big difference there.”

Hall said that after learning about what CUPHD was conducting, an inquiry into the event while also doing contact tracing, she decided to pause current in-person, school-sanctioned programming until they learned about the impact the positive cases could have on the community. 

“It was our decision,” Hall said. “Not Julie (Pryde’s-Public Health Administrator). I own it. With input from our school nurse, we felt it was best to temporarily suspend activities going on at high school out of an abundance of caution. We just felt that that was the right thing to do.”

With the amount of students and adults at the event, Hall said that she could see how COVID-19 could have spread quickly. 

“We felt that was the best thing to do right now,” Hall said. “Let’s take a pause, a deep breath, learn more about the situation, let the public health department do their investigating, then we can move forward when we have more information.”

Hall said that this experience will be one that she will reflect upon as the district develops a plan for bringing students back to school in the fall.

While she does not have all the answers to how this will influence the district’s approach, she said that there are things that can be learned from this first outbreak.

“I want to learn from this and it will inform us as we go back to school,” she said.

She added that school cannot be closed with the addition of each new case, but that cases may have to be examined on an individual basis to get a sense of how the district should respond. Hall said guidance from the school nurse, Nita Bachman will be warranted.

“We are so fortunate to have a school nurse, a really knowledgeable excellent school nurse as an internal resource,” she said. 

The district will have their in-school protocols on how to handle symptoms, sick kids, what screening processes for the health department to review once this situation dies down. 

“We want to walk together in this process,” she said. 

Health officials are asking anyone who attended the “prom” to get tested for COVID-19.