The decision came down from Central office that Sevier County Schools will be closed Wednesday and Thursday due to illness.
The school system had a 16 percent absentee rate Tuesday.
Out of a total of 14,500 students, 2337 students were absent or left early today.
Sevier County School Superintendent Dr. Jack Parton told the Seymour Herald, “We’ve been tracing it (the flue) for the last five or six days and the percentage of students and faculty affected kept inching up to 16 percent so we had to do something.”
With over 200 employees and 2000 students and at least eight bus drivers missing from school today, the decision was made to close school for a few days to give everyone a chance to get well.
Parton explained that the problem was when the students would go home sick then return to school, they would get re-infected and the cycle would start all over again.
In addition, there were no additional substitute teachers to take the place of the sick faculty which caused another problem.
“Over the next three or four days we’re going to get in there and sanitize and disinfect the door knobs, water fountains and other areas,” stated Parton.
Parton said that they hope with these few days off combined with the winter break, the students and faculty will have sufficient time to overcome their ailments.
Greg Clark, principle of the Seymour High School said that the numbers of students leaving to go home sick was in the 20 to 30 groups all day.
“The percentage of kids sick went from 15 – 18 percent,” Clark told the Seymour Herald. “It started heading down then started going up again.”
“We even had some team members that were sick and missed the championship basket ball game last night.”
Clark says it’s been a pesky little bug and he’s glad Central Office decided to close the schools to give everyone a chance to recover.
School will reopen again February 19, 2008.