Assistant principal who lost eye at school is still angry, but she forgives student

CORSICANA, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - A Texas educator with more than 30 years of experience is calling for change, adding that even though she’s angry, she has forgiven the student who blinded her during an attack at school.

Fifty-six-year-old Candra Rogers, the assistant principal at Corsicana Independent School District’s Collins Intermediate, was blinded in her left eye in August after a student she was trying to calm down following a fight threw a wooden hanger that hit her eye and knocked it out of its socket.

She hasn’t returned to work since.

“I have headaches every single day, every day,” Rogers said. “There are some days I can’t get out of bed.”

This is the first time the career educator has opened up in detail about the disturbing afternoon at school that changed her life forever.

Education runs deep in Rogers’ family. She was born the daughter of a school teacher and raised in Manor, Texas.

She didn’t grow up dreaming of teaching, but after marrying and having a baby, her husband took his first coaching and teaching job in the Palestine Independent School District. Rogers got a job in the same district to help make ends meet.

“That was the first job that we could find, and we had an 18-month-old at the time,” she said.

Rogers quickly realized being an educator was her passion.

“Education has been my ministry,” she said.

The couple’s career in education has taken them all over the state of Texas, touching the lives of many students.

After leaving the Palestine Independent School District, the couple moved to Corsicana in 1992, where her husband had graduated high school. Rogers worked there as an aide and later as a teacher.

In 1998, the couple moved to North Crowley, in Fort Worth, where Rogers taught Spanish. She then moved to Manor High School as a teacher before going to Denton Ryan in 2008.

Rogers worked as a testing coordinator in 2012 before taking a teaching job in the Crowley Independent School District.

She then moved to Denton Ryan High School as a teacher in 2018. Her final stop before coming back to Corsicana was at Waxahachie High School as an assistant principal in 2021.

Life had come full circle when Rogers’ husband accepted the position of varsity head football coach at his alma mater of Corsicana High School earlier this year.

Rogers took a job as the assistant principal at Collins Intermediate and the pair was thrilled to start a new school year.

“I was really excited about this school year and it started off well, until it didn’t,” Rogers said.

It was only the fourth school day when the unthinkable happened.

“At lunch, I was sitting with one of the teachers,” Rogers recalled. “I heard a call over the radio from our behavioral class needing some assistance.”

Rogers rushed to the classroom and found the teacher and all students but one, a sixth grade boy, outside the room.

The boy inside the room had gotten into a fight with another student and was enraged.

Rogers calmly entered the classroom and was immediately attacked.

The boy first threw chairs at her, which she was able to dodge.

Then, he found a hanger.

“He found a hanger and he threw that and I couldn’t block that fast enough, and it caught me in my eye and knocked it out,” she said.

To this day, she’s still not sure why that hanger was even in the classroom.

“It was pouring, blood was pouring,” Rogers said. “When I touched my eye and looked at it, it was just covered in blood.”

Rogers said despite the critical injury, she never cried.

“I’ve learned to be calm when things are bad,” she said. “I was calm throughout that whole situation and remained calm so much so, that after I got hit, I stumbled out of the classroom because I was holding my eye and bleeding and went out and called my husband to come get me because I didn’t know the severity. My husband actually got here and saw me with my eye hanging out.”

Rogers was flown by medical helicopter from her school campus to Parkland Hospital in Dallas.

“There was a nurse with me and I just starting saying, ‘Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus,’ just praying,” she recalled.

Rogers was taken into surgery to put her eye back into its socket. Doctors debated removing it, but decided to leave it in hopes she would regain vision.

Those hopes have now diminished.

“I can’t see anything,” Rogers said. “Everything is black.”

Rogers was discharged from the hospital and sent home to recover.

Every day is a struggle, she says.

“I’m still not driving. I am having to learn to adapt,” Rogers remarked.

The trauma has affected her entire family. Her oldest son and his wife left their jobs in Houston and moved in with Rogers, along with their daughter Zoella, to help with care while her husband spends many hours working his coaching job.

Her husband still comes home every day at lunch to check on her.

Rogers said it’s been devastating watching the effects on those around here, especially Zoella.

“What was very difficult for me was her being afraid of me after this because I have pictures,” she said, referring to the injury. “I can show you the pictures of after. She doesn’t understand why anyone would hurt her ‘Cici.’”

Rogers said she’s in counseling and is walking through different stages of grief.

Right now, she’s angry. The student, whom she knew before the incident, has still not apologized and she says she doubts he ever will, but because of her faith, she’s forgiven him.

That student is no longer on any Corsicana campus, sources tell KWTX, but because of his age, neither the school district nor the Navarro County District Attorney’s office would comment.

“I’ve forgiven him. I had to,” 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 a hospital.”

Rogers held a news conference where she read a pointed statement just days after the incident sent shockwaves throughout the country.

The educator put blame on the lack of funding for public schools by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

During the conference, Rogers said Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code, created in 1995 to protect marginalized students regarding how they are disciplined, should be “reevaluated so that no other teacher, principal or educator is ever put in this position.”

“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,” she said on Aug. 27.

Rogers wonders how her outcome may have been different if schools had better options for kids with behavioral issues or better services provided to address their needs.

She says the bottom line is public schools are underfunded, staff is stressed and stretched thin, and as a result, everyone suffers.

“Chairs do not, should not be thrown in school, but that happens every day across the country. That’s not OK,” Rogers said. “School is a place to come to learn, to thrive, to achieve things you didn’t think you could. It’s not a place for ducking chairs or hangers.”

The beloved teacher also urges parents to get more involved in raising their children.

“Pay attention to your children. Give them the attention that they need. What we, as educators, are encountering are children who have been raised by electronics.”

Rogers is scheduled to have her eye removed in early January in Dallas. A prosthetic will be put in its place.

She’s hopeful that will alleviate the constant pain she’s currently experiencing.

The veteran teacher and administrator has visited her campus since the incident because “she misses her people.”

Rogers is not sure if or when she’ll ever return, but says she’s got some pretty good motivation to try.

“To save the one. To help the one,” Rogers said. “If there is one that I can help, then the one.”