Last year was all but a record breaker for the Springfield School District; it had its best attendance percentage in some two decades. Whether it'll be able to hold those numbers this year remains in question, and the impact could reach well beyond a morning head count.

Seeing all of the Williams Elementary School students at their desks is evidence of success for Becky Morgan.

"Students, if they come to school, they'll be successful later on in life,” said Morgan, the district’s attendance coordinator.

That was the main idea of the district’s goal of hitting 95-percent attendance district-wide by 2012. Last year, it hit 94.48 percent. Williams saw the best gains for an elementary school.

"As long as we keep going and sustain, sustain, sustain, we'll get there,” said Morgan.

With the start of this school year comes a kink in the plan, and an all-important message: "Stay home if you're ill,” said Jean Grabeel, coordinator of Health Services.

The mere threat of H1N1 has businesses and schools making contingency plans, including what to do if they start to see mass absences due to the flu.

"We have to protect the health and safety of our students and staff, so health has to come to the top,” said Grabeel.

So far, the CDC recommends schools keep their doors open but the district is prepared to lock 'em up if they start to see absences well upward of 10-percent.

"We would only look at individual sites, not the entire district," Grabeel said.

It’s a move further necessitated when you consider how important those attendance numbers are. They play a key role in how the state figures the amount of funding it allots individual districts.

"That incentive puts textbooks on desks and keeps the district running," Morgan said.

Right now, they can't do much more than what they have.

"Our whole focus is on prevention," Grabeel emphasizes.

And they're focusing, too, on contingencies, both for the flu and its side effects.

"If we fall short this year, we'll find ways to make it up," Morgan said.

Representatives from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education says schools may have to close at some point, not just if kids are absent in huge numbers, but also if teachers are absent and they simply don't have enough staff to work with students. They also say they have not made any contingency plans to deal with that funding formula issue.

With kids being especially susceptible to the illness, the Centers for Disease Control recommends vaccination when that becomes available. Grabeel says school district administrators are discussing the possibility of schools serving as vaccination sites. However, vaccination would not be mandatory; they've run into some misunderstanding on that issue.