As the school year goes on, student absences are rising in the classroom and leaving a mark on the quality of education.

When researching the positive Covid-19 cases in Iowa, as of January 19, 2022, there were an additional 12,559 positive cases in Iowa, creating a total of 670,000 positive cases. This number is just the people who were willing to, or required, to get tested. 

As new variants are being discovered, more signs and symptoms are also present. Some of these signs include the common cold symptoms, in which most people would not question to get tested. 

Alongside the simple cold symptoms, people are also getting false negatives due to the different types of tests. Some variants of Covid-19 have been proven to not show up as a positive test due to being located more in other areas. The first strand of Covid-19 tends to show a positive result from the nasal testing and the Omnicron strand typically shows a positive test from oral tests. 

When comparing the number of absences at school, there is a clear difference within the two previous years. Although we are unable to identify the exact reasoning for each absence from the week of Tuesday to Thursday in 2020, there were 60 total absences. The following year in 2021, the same week and days, there were only 44 total absences. However, this year during the same week of school, there were a total of 168 absences. These numbers were provided  by the high school office. 

Once again, the reasoning behind each absence is not present, but the large differences in years has shown a concern regarding the learning of students, especially this year due to Covid-19 still being present and virtual learning is no longer an option.