JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Duval County Superintendent Diana Greene was out of the office and inside Loretto Elementary school teaching a group of third-grade students Thursday morning.
Out of thousands of teachers in Duval county, 172 of them didn’t show up for work.
To put that number into perspective there are about 7,000 teachers, so nearly 2.5% of teachers were absent on the first day of school.
According to a Duval County spokesperson, only 80 of the 172 teachers called out sick today.
The district says 295 substitute teachers filled in to cover classes left unattended.
“That is a wonderful number for us because we have been high as 800 subs on any given day so the fact that we had 295 subs means it was a successful day,” said Greene.
Greene says she enjoyed her class and is looking forward to this new normal.
“The students responded as if this was a normal school day. The student wore their masks. I had very little challenges with them keeping their masks on,” said Greene.