Whitley County schools extend illness-induced closure

Officials with the Whitley County School system decided Wednesday evening to keep schools in the district closed until Monday, Oct. 5, in hopes that the recent rash of illness will subside enough to allow attendance levels to return to normal.

Whitley County Superintendent Lonnie Anderson said Thursday that the decision was based on the number of patients local doctors has reportedly treated for flu and flu-like symptoms.

"Local doctors have seen an increasing number of patients with flu and flu-like symptoms," Anderson said. "Considering this, we thought it was necessary to extend the closure and maybe give the situation a cooling off period, so to speak.

"We will return to class on Monday, Oct. 5 and by then we hope our attendance levels can retunt at least close to normal," he added. 

As of Friday Sept. 26, district-wide attendance was around the 85 percent level, which is down from the norm of about 95 percent. School officials cancelled classed due to the high number of students with flu-like symptoms. 

Attendance at Whitley County High School was 82.5 percent on Friday. The district’s elementary schools averaged an 87.82 percent attendance rate.

On Tuesday, Whitley County Superintendent Lonnie Anderson said he felt like the best thing to do is give everyone a few days off to try and recouperate. At the time, the possibility of schools closing for the week was not ruled out. 

"On Monday, we talked with local health officials and determined that there are a number of things that appear to be going around," Anderson said. "Influenza is one of them. Another is an upper respiratory infection and another is an intestinal virus that is going around. In light of that we decided to take an additional two (Tuesday and Wednesday) and days off."

Anderson said that the Center for Disease Control recommends taking break of five to seven days, and school officials felt that the five-day option was best.

According to an alert sent out via schoolsout.com, classes were set to resume as scheduled Monday.