Before you get mad at me, please let me say, I am writing this as much for myself as I am for you.

As of Monday, September 21, 2020, the Winnebago County Health Department says that 69 positive COVID-19 cases have been reported in Rockford-area schools. Here's the specifics from Monday's press conference with the Winnebago County Health Department from mystateline.com...

 

That's some scary stuff to hear.

On Sunday we received an email from my oldest daughter's school saying all the kindergarten classes and staff have been quarantined for 14 days due to a positive COVID case, and I thought, "oh boy, here we go".

My daughter is not in kindergarten this year. I could have started panicking that her class would be next and that my husband and I made the wrong decision to send our girls back to school upon reading that, but I chose to stop, breathe and think for a moment.

We knew this was going to happen. There is absolutely no way we would make it through an entire school year without these situations happening. Let's look a little closer at the facts. Contact tracing done by the WCHD found that none of these cases were caused by exposure at schools. All 69 cases, at this moment, were contracted outside of the school walls, and to me, that's positive news.

Yes, I know that the next round of quarantines could be caused by exposures from within the school walls, but I'm choosing to hope the proactive efforts of our school leaders and the Winnebago County Health Department will stop that from happening.

Worrying all the time about "if" and "when" it will happen does no good. We'll drive ourselves crazy.  We made the choice to send our kids to school, now we need to rock it. Be obsessive about hand washing and social distance. Wear the masks and make sure your children do too. DON'T PANIC, ain't nobody got time for that. Go with the flow and be a team player to help get COVID the heck out of our town!

Catch Lil Zim on ‘Q98.5 Mornings with Lil Zim & JB’ on Q98.5 from 6:00 a.m. to 10 a.m. Follow her on TwitterInstagram, and Facebook

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