CORSICANA, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) – An assistant principal in Texas who was blinded in her right eye when a student attacked her has now had her eye surgically removed.
Candra Rogers, 56, is the assistant principal at Collins Intermediate School in the Corsicana Independent School District.
Rogers has been an educator for 30 years.
She recalled the day of the attack in August, saying she received a call over her radio that the teacher in a behavioral class needed assistance.
When she arrived in the classroom, she was told two students had gotten in a physical fight. One of the students – a sixth-grade boy – was still inside the room, enraged.
She went inside the room to help.
“He started throwing chairs. I caught the first one. He threw another; I blocked that one. Then he found a [clothes] hanger and threw that, and I couldn’t block that fast enough. And it caught me in my eye and knocked it out,” Rogers said.
Rogers said after she got hit, she stayed calm but stumbled out of the classroom.
“I was holding my eye and bleeding. And I went out and I called my husband to come get me. I didn’t know the severity. My husband got there and saw me with my eye hanging out,” she said.
Rogers was flown from the school by helicopter to a hospital in Dallas. She underwent surgery to put her eye back in its socket, with doctors hoping that she’d regain her vision.
Those hopes have since diminished. She never regained her vision, and she had her eye surgically removed on Jan. 14.
Although she is suffering from agonizing pain, Rogers is hopeful the surgery will relieve the daily headaches she has experienced since the attack.
Rogers wonders if she would have met a different outcome if schools had the funding that they needed in order to provide better services for students with behavioral issues or had more equipped staff.
In a press conference, Rogers largely put the blame on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“It is wrong to have so many mandates that make educating our public school children more difficult. It is wrong to take money from grossly underfunded schools,” Rogers said in the news conference. “I believe in public school education. But what happened to me should never happen to another educator. Mr. Abbott, release the funds, because you are also culpable for what happened to me.”
Rogers’ son and daughter-in-law left their jobs in Houston and have since moved in with her to help. Their daughter, Rogers’ 8-year-old granddaughter, also lives with them.
Rogers said the trauma of what happened to her has affected her entire family.
The assistant principal said she is in counseling, but because of her faith, she has forgiven the student who attacked her.
“It was a poor choice on his part. And that’s the way I feel about it. And his poor choice has affected me for the rest of my life,” she said. “I am angry with the student, I am angry with the student’s parents, I am angry with our state system, because no educator should go to work and end up being airlifted to the hospital.”
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