CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago school officials shut down an elementary school Wednesday and two other Illinois schools planned to close for the remainder of the week after the detection of probable student cases of swine flu.

The illnesses are among nine probable cases reported by the Illinois Department of Public Health — the state's first in an outbreak suspected of killing more than 150 in Mexico that has spread across the United States and other parts of the world.

The first U.S. swine flu death in the current outbreak was confirmed Wednesday, a 23-month-old child in Texas.

The Illinois cases all are in the northern part of the state, with five in Chicago, two in Kane County and single cases in both Lake and DuPage counties. The youngest person diagnosed is age 6. Two other cases are children and the rest are adults, including an 18-year-old.

"Right now we have mild cases; no one has been hospitalized," IDPH Director Dr. Damon Arnold said at a news conference in Chicago where Mayor Richard Daley, Gov. Pat Quinn and other officials stressed the state is working hard to prevent further illnesses.

In Chicago, attendance dropped at Joyce Kilmer Elementary School before test results from one sick student indicated swine flu, school officials said. They decided to take the precaution of closing the school for at least two days because of a rise in illnesss-related absences.

Nearly 96 percent of the school's students are from low-income families, according to state data. Advocates said the closure would hit those families hard.

In Kane County, health officials announced that one case of probable swine flu was identified at Rotolo Middle School in Batavia and another at Marmion Academy in Aurora. School officials were notifying parents about closures at both schools through week's end.

Marmion Academy, a Catholic boys high school with more than 500 students, canceled extracurricular events, including a national competition in Florida for the ROTC drill team, said school headmaster John Milroy.

"This is something they worked for all year long," Milroy said noting team members' disappointment.

Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Terry Mason said the child there whose test results indicate swine flu is recovering at home.

"Parents should not be alarmed but they should be prepared," he said. "If children are sick, keep them home."

Jenelle Barrett, whose daughter attends the closed Chicago school, arrived at the school Wednesday morning wanting to know whether the sick child was in her daughter's second-grade classroom.

Her daughter, 7-year-old Destiny Cruickshank, said students have been coughing and sneezing.

Her teacher told them "when you are coughing and stuff that you should go wash your hands," the girl said.

Chicago Public Schools officials said to protect family privacy, they would not release information about the student with probable swine flu, including how the child may have contracted the illness. A specimen from the child has been sent to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said IDPH spokeswoman Kelly Jakubek.

Alderman Joe Moore said school officials told him the child is "in the upper grades" of the school, which serves students in preschool through eighth grades.

Arlette Crawford, 40, learned about the probable case of swine flu when she arrived at the school with her 5-year-old daughter, Aaliyah.

"I am pretty nervous," she said, recalling how on Tuesday she ate breakfast at the school with her daughter and they sat near another girl who "was sneezing nonstop," had a flushed face and raspy voice. Crawford said she and a teacher persuaded the mother to take that child home.

CPS chief executive officer Ron Huberman said state health officials alerted him Tuesday night that a student at the North Side elementary school had a probable case of swine flu. He said the district informed families about the school closure through automated phone messages.

Huberman said school officials are telephoning and interviewing the parents of students absent from schools with abnormally large numbers of absences. The information gathered will help determine if other schools will be closed, Huberman said.

The Illinois school closures came as President Barack Obama urged school districts with confirmed cases of swine flu to consider closing to help control spread of the illness.

"Parents should also think about contingencies if schools in their areas should shut down ... . Just sending a (sick) child from a school to a day care center would not be a good solution," Obama said.

Rhonda Present of the Evanston, Ill.-based advocacy group Parents Work said she's concerned about the financial security for families hit by school closures. The group is part of a coalition working for workplace and legislative changes to allow parents to earn paid sick days they can use to take care of ill children.

State officials are calling the cases "probable" until their test results are confirmed at the federal level. Officials said the CDC will make the final determination on whether Illinois' cases match the swine flu outbreak in Mexico.

As of 2008, Hispanic students made up 59.9 percent of Kilmer's population, according to CPS, but Mason cautioned against drawing conclusions or stereotyping. Determining whether the child had traveled recently to Mexico will be part of the investigation, Mason said.

Mason said the school would be cleaned, but emphasized that the flu spreads through contact between people.

"It's not doorknobs and water faucets, it's children coughing and sneezing," he said. "We want to emphasize that the building is not a problem."

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Associated Press writers Deanna Bellandi and Karen Hawkins contributed to this report.