Teacher told to stay away after trip to Africa

PHOTOGRAPHER: The Associated Press

A Catholic school teacher in Kentucky was told to take a leave of absence for 21 days when she returned from a mission trip to Kenya, even though the country is thousands of miles from the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.

Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz said Thursday the decision by St. Margaret Mary school in Louisville was “not the right judgment.” The religion teacher, Susan Sherman, resigned last week.

Kurtz says the school “made some very prudent judgments in the midst of an awful lot of confusion.”

Kenya is on Africa’s east coast; the Ebola outbreak has been concentrated in West Africa in countries including Liberia. Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, is about 3,300 miles from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. By comparison, Los Angeles is about 3,100 miles from Atlanta.