With only 89 percent attendance and 30 absent staff members on Friday, mostly due to illness, the Boyle County Schools have made the decision to call off school on Monday, in an effort to allow people to recuperate.

“We’ve been running 91, 91.1 (percent) all week … I don’t know if that would have justified closing schools,” said Superintendent Mike LaFavers. “We came in today and had 30 staff out.”

That, he said, hits hard. There were 14 teachers out on Thursday and 14 that planned to be out on Friday. Instead 24 teachers were out, bringing the total staff absences to 30 due to personal or family illness.

“You’re weighing — looking at all the data, the staff, are you able to cover for everyone who’s out … We are listening to principals about how schools are functioning,” LaFavers said. “We did get everything covered today, but it was difficult.”

He said this year seems to be tougher — with two types of flu going around, LaFavers said it seems the illnesses are more contagious and harder to recover from than normal.

“The number of people getting sick … We’ve been dealing with this for two months. That’s not normal,” he said. “We usually get hit early and then we’re good. Last year, we got hit in March.”

LaFavers said attendance hasn’t really improved since they returned to school in January, but has held close to 91 percent. With it dropping below, to 89 percent on Friday, the decision was made.

“You just weigh all of that and we said, ‘Let’s have a three-day weekend and have school on Tuesday,’” LaFavers said. “I don’t know if a three-day weekend will help, but we’ve got a lot of sick people. Maybe it will help those folks get well.

“We’ll see what we have on Tuesday.”

Provided no other major events occur, LaFavers said, the district will have school on Tuesday.

SO YOU KNOW

The Danville Independent School District was out on Friday due to illness. School will resume there on Monday.