Rich Township HS District 227 COVID cases send kids to remote learning for 2 weeks

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. (WLS) -- A south suburban school district is going to remote learning because of COVID-19 cases.

Students in the Rich Township High School District 227, which has campuses in Olympia Fields and Richton Park, were told not to come to school Friday. They're being advised to stay home for the next two weeks.

The schools are closed Friday to allow teachers to prepare for remote learning. That will begin Monday.

Some students showed up to the high school in Olympia Fields Friday morning unaware of the closure.

"The whole last year we had to do remote learning so another two weeks isn't gonna be that bad cause yesterday we talked about it was the football team," said Woodley Jean, Rich Township High School student.

On Wednesday, parents of the football team got an email informing them of a positive case on the squad. For those students who were not a close contact, the district asked them to take a Covid test at the school before their first class Thursday morning

Porscha Mazzarri has a son on the team and she claims safety protocols are not being met.

"My child went in there," she said. "He went and got tested. They did not socially distance the students at all. Students were half masked up, half mask down. On top of that, a student did test positive and they were allowing the student to just roam freely."

Thursday night the district sent a letter to parents notifying them that two or more people have tested positive at the high school.

They say through contact tracing, they have been able to identify and monitor those who had close contact with those cases and they have been notified.

"Right now they're saying two," Mazzarri said. "It's more than two. It's more, including a teacher, but they're only gonna you know put out what they want you to know."

The district said it is following state health guidelines deciding to suspend in-person learning and all activities Friday to Thursday, October 14.

The district has campuses in Olympia Fields and Richton Park. The schools closed today to allow teachers to prepare for remote learning.

"Other schools have been doing far worse than us," Jean said. "We made it until October basically so that's at least a positive. School is doing pretty fine."

ABC7 has reached out to the superintendent to comment about the COVID numbers and safety protocols and have not heard back.