PATRICK COUNTY (WSLS 10) - A flu outbreak has gotten so bad in Patrick County the entire school system is closing for the rest of the week.
Nearly 17 to 20 percent of the students and at least 13 teachers have come down with the virus.
Janitors are going to be using bleach to disinfect the lockers at Patrick County High School over the next two days.
Teachers say it's been disrupting their classes all week.
Earth Sciences teacher Rendy Williams says no one saw the outbreak coming Monday.
"It just happened all of a sudden. It wasn't like a few here and a few there, it was just all of a sudden everybody's out for the Flu," said Williams.
Superintendent Bill Stroufe says he first learned about the outbreak from the principal of Patrick County High where Williams works.
"About mid-morning on Monday, he texted and says I've got 240 kids out," said Stroufe.
Stroufe started laying out the numbers in a Google doc, and on Tuesday, the problem got worse.
"I have a small school up on the mountain called Meadows of Dan Elementary and it has 136 kids right now. He had 30 plus out," said Stroufe.
By Wwednesday morning, Williams says her class was a ghost-town.
"My advanced class, I have 17 in there and I think I had maybe eight in class today, and when you're trying to teach and to stay on timelines for testing and everything, it just is, half the kids are missing it, it's really bad, it's frustrating as a teacher," said Williams.
Stroufe says he spoke to the health department about the outbreak.
"We decided that the best thing to do was probably close schools for a couple days, because we're looking at about... probably like 17 to 20 percent of students are absent," said Stroufe.
Now, for the next two days, janitors will be sanitizing every school in the system.
"It's just a whole lot to clean. You talk about water fountains, anything that touches a surface. All door handles, we've got to clean all laptops," said Stroufe.
But Williams says, if it keeps the flu away, she's happy to take a few days off.
"I'm really, really glad that we're out for two days. This ought to take care of the situation," said Williams.
Stroufe says, in addition to the actual school building, janitors will be disinfecting school buses as well in the hopes that on Monday, everyone will be healthy again.