SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - A new tool will track all positive student and staff COVID-19 cases within District 186.

The tracker not only shows case numbers, but also breaks them down by school and grade level.

District 186 health services manager Jennie Hughes said leaders use this data to keep the numbers as low as possible.

"It's something that we're looking at everyday and how can we manage that number, how can we work with families to get students cleared, how can we keep kids safe when there's a positive in the classroom," Hughes said. "So there's just a lot of working and moving parts to that that we're trying to manage."

Hughes said the larger size of the district has a lot to do with their mitigation strategy.

"Due to the amount of students that we have in our district, I think that's really what has kept us in the more strict guidance, because we're dealing with 14,000 students and I think that makes a big difference compared to some other smaller districts," she said. 

So far, 403 students and 179 staff have tested positive since the district started keeping track. Moving forward, they plan to keep strict mitigations to keep that number from getting even higher.

"Our plan is to keep really those strict guidelines in place, our plan is to continue with the layered mitigation within the classrooms, to be transparent with the community and with families, and to really give as much support as we can to the nurses as well as administration, teachers and staff," said Hughes.

The dashboard is updated Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. and weekend numbers are reflected on Mondays.

The dashboard can be found here: Return to Learn - COVID-19 Dashboard (sps186.org)