Despite challenges posed by significant damage from Hurricane Isaias and piles of roadside debris from the storm, Santa Rosa County District Schools reopened Monday, a little more than a week after landfall. Superintendent Dr. Karen Barber reported a successful return to the classroom, with safe transportation and high attendance among students and staff.
For more details, WUWF’s Sandra Averhart spoke to the Superintendent Thursday morning.
Sandra Averhart: Dr. Barber, again, I want to thank you for taking a few minutes to speak with me about the reopening of district schools this week following Hurricane Isaias. How have things gone this week with students and staff returning?
Dr. Karen Barber: Outstanding. Outstanding. We truly needed until Oct. 19 to safely reopen schools, but the mission is accomplished. So just a few statistics for you. We have about 29,000 students in our school district, and about 3,700 employees. And on the very first day of school on Oct. 19, we had 98% of our educational support staff that were here. Ninety-seven percent of our instructional staff were present. We have 171 bus routes. Every bus route was covered with a driver. And the best news is our average daily attendance in Santa Rosa County is 95%. And we were at 94% of our students in attendance on Monday. So the data certainly showed that we needed that extra time to do it well. And Monday was just a spectacular day, full of joy to see everybody again. So it’s been a very, very good week.
Averhart: Now, transportation, going in, was one of your biggest concerns with hurricane debris on the roadside, making it difficult for your buses to navigate and a safety factor for students. How did that go?
Karen Barber: Yes, that absolutely was the biggest concern. Preparing our schools and getting them ready, if we have power restored, that’s feasible. But with the debris that’s piled up in neighborhoods, just treacherous. And then you add road crews that are trying to remove the debris from neighborhoods, really, really a recipe for tragedy and disaster. So that was certainly our main concern.
So you had Florida Department of Emergency Management, Santa Rosa County Emergency Management, the Florida Department of Transportation, law enforcement, the National Guard working through Sunday evening to push back debris to clear debris from bus stops. We added about 170 additional bus stops into our normal routes.
And on Sunday, you had school employees and administrators, and my husband and myself out there with extra signage to just put in this where the 171 new stops were — to put a sign there so that motorists know and residents know not to park there, not to pile any more debris there, but to leave that area clear so students could safely get on buses the next morning.
So we added those 171 additional stops and ran our regular routes as well. And, although it was challenging for our bus drivers, they came through beautifully. No incidents of any injury or incident. In fact, in the afternoon, our buses were on time, taking children home. So the routes in the morning on Monday were just a little bit slower because of the additional routes and just being extra cautious. But we’ve had no issues with transportation this week, but we really needed through Sunday evening to make those routes as clear as possible.
Averhart: How long do you think you’ll be able to or need to maintain these
additional routes, temporary bus stops?
Barber: It’s hard for me to predict that. You know, this storm has really been such a complicated storm when it comes to the restoration of power and the removal of debris. I saw something this morning about the removal of debris costing the panhandle about $100 million. And as you know, crews remove the debris, and people stack more out in front of their yard.
So the prediction from Santa Rosa Emergency Management is that this is going to be a process that takes about four to six weeks. That’s their prediction. So we’ll just evaluate throughout the week. Every day, I’m debriefing with our transportation department about how things are going. And every area has different challenges. Four to six weeks — that’s the prediction about how long it’s going to take to clear all the debris. We’ll see if that holds true. If it’s shorter, that’d be great. If it’s longer, then we just have to be flexible and continue to be very vigilant.
I’m just so grateful to our families for making sure that their children get safely to the bus. And I’m very thankful to our motorists that are slowing down and getting over for our buses, and our families for placing their trust in us when it comes to the safety of their children.
Averhart: Quickly, can you give us a facilities update in terms of your structural damage and maybe any impact to operations? Do you have a number as to how much damage?
Barber: Well, when you combine the debris removal, that's the estimate. The early preliminary estimate was about $2.5 million for debris removal from our school campuses. But it’s about $17 million. That’s our preliminary estimate of the damage to our facilities. And, of course, we’ve got some schools that had just minor damage, soffits ripped out, awnings. But then we’ve got some other schools with more significant damage, like Milton High School. The roof came off their gym. And because of the water intrusion, now not only will the roof need to be replaced, but the basketball court will need to be replaced as well.
So, there isn’t a campus that didn’t have some damage, but some had more than others.
Jay elementary was another school. Some of our multi-purpose rooms at our middle schools received some damage. Gulf Breeze Middle School, Hobbs Middle School, Avalon Middle School. Those are structures that are a little bit taller than our one-story buildings, so they were a little more susceptible to some of that damage from those high winds. And I’m told that they were as high as 115 miles an hour.
But all 36 of our campuses were safe and ready for use on Monday. All of our instructional areas were safe and ready for use on Monday. So it’s just areas such as the gym at Milton High School and a couple of the multi-purpose rooms that we are waiting to clear. And, of course, with Milton High School’s gym, that’s going to be months before we’re ready to occupy that space again.
Averhart: I would imagine you’re making accommodations for volleyball and the upcoming basketball season.
Barber: Oh, absolutely. That’s a big, big, big priority. And, certainly, it is for our teams at Milton High School, and I happen to be a Hoosier, and my daughter is a college basketball coach. So basketball is very important to me, and I know it is to the players and to the community. So we’ve got several options that we’re exploring to determine where our boys and girls will be able to practice and then play their games, and working with our community to find those spaces and to have a solid plan by the end of.
Averhart: Dr. Barber, I’m going to have to leave it there. And I want to thank you very much for speaking with me today.
Karen Barber: Well, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.
