Dongola school closes as officials search for cause of rash

DONGOLA, Ill. -- Instead of children, state environmental officials wandered along the brightly painted hallways of the local school Wednesday trying to determine why at least 15 students, two teachers and a custodian broke out in a rash.

School officials closed Dongola Unit School District No. 66 until they discover the cause of the red, itchy rash that first appeared on a sixth-grader's neck last week, and quickly spread to others, superintendent Richard Reavis said Wednesday.

"We're just trying to be as cautious as we can," said Reavis, as he stood amid the 50 desks, chairs and shelves stacked in the school hallway for cleaning.

But even after tests by the county and state health departments, also by a private environmental firm, by the architects who designed the building and by a registered nurse, the mystery continued, Reavis said.

It all started after a little girl showed her sixth-grade teacher her red, itchy neck after gym class Monday, Jan. 6, Reavis said.

Before the day was out, the girl's classroom, located at the end of a new, $1.2 million wing of the school, was closed off, as well as the classroom next-door, where children started breaking out in the same skin condition, Reavis said.

Two days later, a total of 15 children in the two classrooms had broken out as well as the custodian sent in to scrub the rooms, Reavis said. School officials closed the school from Wednesday to Friday last week as they searched for answers.

But when parents of some 90 of the school's 350 students kept their children home on Monday, Jan. 13, out of concern about the rash, Reavis decided to close the school again, he said.

The rash seems to vanish as soon as it appears, and is accompanied by no other symptoms of illness, Reavis said. It appears on the neck, upper arms and waist, and looks like a heat rash, he said.

No one in other parts of the building, which accommodates children from kindergarten to 12th grade, broke out in the rash, Reavis said, although the school also built a new gymnasium and additional high school classrooms inside the same complex last summer as part of a $3.4 million expansion.

And no one reported the rash during the fall semester, when the new areas of the school first opened, he said.

Examiners from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency were conducting tests Wednesday, said Maggie Carson, a spokeswoman for the agency.

It will likely take several days before they have anything definitive to report, she said.