Students in Clinton County finally returned to the classroom on Monday of this week after literally having an “unexpected” week-long break that extended back to almost two weeks ago.

Although the region faced bitter cold and even dangerous low temperatures much of last week, it wasn’t the weather that cancelled classes but rather flu related illness, which the Centers for Disease Control had noted Kentucky had reached the “epidemic” phase for the flu in late January.

Because of low attendance the last week of January, school officials decided to cancel classes Friday and Monday, January 25 and January 28 in hopes the sickness would subside. However, when school resumed on Tuesday, January 26, attendance continued to be below acceptable levels, prompting school to be cancelled the remainder of the week. These paragraphs will insert into Gary’s school session.

On Tuesday morning of this week, Director of Pupil Personnel Julie York told the Clinton County News that attendance numbers were almost back to normal levels when classes resumed Monday morning.

Compared to an attendance rate of 80 percent last Tuesday, January 29, when classes were dismissed due to the low attendance, the combined attendance rate this last Monday, February 4, was at 93 percent.

York said it appeared the decision to close the schools and send the students home last week paid off.

“We were almost back to normal yesterday,” York said in a brief telephone interview Tuesday morning. “The cold weather helped also, I think, because everyone stayed home while they were off.”

Clinton County Schools Superintendent Charlotte Nasief noted late last week that classes resumed a week ago Tuesday, noting the district had to assess each situation to determine whether or not to continue or cancel classes.

The decision to call off school all of last week (after Tuesday) was to give students the time to recover from the flu in hopes that attendance would reach normal averages by the beginning of this week.

Even though several days of school were missed from late January through early this month, students were still fortunate to be able to keep up their homework without any additional school days being added onto the school year–at least at this point.

Thanks to NTI (Non-Traditional Instruction) or “cyber” days, students were still able to complete school work, either online or through packets that were distributed back in November. The district once again decided to take all 10 allotted NTI days this school year.

Director of Pupil Personnel Julie York said last week that the district has now used six of those 10 days, but the positive news is they still have four such days remaining to be used if necessary.

Also, the winter season is beginning to wind down and the school calendar has 15 make-up days added in, which should prevent the likelihood of classes having to be extended beyond the regular school term.

Cyber days are used when students cannot attend classes for unforeseeable circumstances, such as adverse weather, illness, etc.

Students receive copies of work packets in a cyber school folder and they should return their work to school on the day they return from the missed day.

A student is not penalized, however, if homework is not turned in the first day classes resume if they misplace any lesson.

If a student is unable to complete the lesson packet prior to returning to school, they will have additional time to make up work by staying after school.