BUCKHORN, Ky. — Kentucky Training Commissioner Jason E. Glass and state Training Division officers spent this week assessing the harm faculties sustained after devastating floodwaters swept by way of japanese Kentucky final month. Not less than 1,100 college students stay displaced from their homes in a single college district alone.
Whereas most college students throughout the nation are kicking off the brand new college 12 months, many in japanese Kentucky college districts are nonetheless determining the place they’ll attend courses or after they’ll be capable to begin. Greater than 7,600 Kentucky college students are still affected, and their begin dates have been pushed into September, in accordance with the state Training Division.
“It was sobering to see the harm, simply driving alongside the street and seeing fridges and couches the place the floodwater receded,” mentioned Toni Konz Tatman, the chief communications officer for the Training Division, who accompanied Glass. “The entire faculties we visited took between 4 and 6 ft of water, so you can truly see the water line on the wall and all these flooring that have to be ripped up. There’s loads of work forward.”
One place with loads of work forward is Buckhorn College, which teaches practically 350 Ok-12 college students on this small city and took virtually 8 ft of water.
Many of the college’s desks and chairs are piled out within the car parking zone now as staff in white hazmat fits stroll out and in dragging out particles and drywall. The bent steel siding of a double-wide trailer covers the outside lunch space, truck tires have been discovered inside school rooms, and a phone pole got here to relaxation within the college’s hallway.
Regardless of its loss, Buckhorn College, which serves as a major spine of the neighborhood, is taken into account one of many fortunate instances. It plans to maneuver college students to the A.B. Combs Elementary College constructing, which was deserted after the district consolidated services.
However it will likely be a minimum of a 12 months till courses return to the college in Buckhorn, and within the meantime college students must journey on buses for as much as an hour to get to class.
“We’ve spoken to all our households and know they’re all OK, however we’re going to lose a few of them to different faculties — there’s little question about that,” Principal Tim Wooten mentioned. “We simply hold asking that they provide us one 12 months to get issues again. That’s what we do right here: No matter it’s, we make it work.”
Buckhorn isn’t the one city struggling to kick off the college 12 months. Letcher County Public Faculties, Jenkins Unbiased Faculties, Knott County Faculties and Leslie County Faculties have all pushed again their begin dates. Leslie will begin subsequent week, and Knott and Jenkins are concentrating on a mid-to-late September return, whereas Letcher nonetheless hasn’t set a return date.
Letcher County, the place greater than 90% of the scholars obtain free or reduced-price lunch, suffered large devastation from the flooding final month. Greater than 1,250 houses have been left uninhabitable, and round 1,100 college students have been displaced, in accordance with the state Training Division.
Faculties like these in Letcher County try not simply to determine the place to have college students attend class, but in addition the right way to get them there. Lots of the roads and bridges are so broken that some imagine driving a heavy college bus on them might result in an accident, which has induced some districts to think about using fleets of vans or giant SUVs to select up college students.
Denise Yonts, the superintendent of Letcher County Public Faculties, mentioned she has already spent $3 million — an enormous sum for the district — on cleanup and hasn’t gotten an estimate again but for the whole restoration of the six buildings that have been broken: a center college, two elementary faculties, a gymnasium and a vocational college.
Yonts and different superintendents worry that they may fall right into a spiral by which they’d lose college students, which would cut back their funding and finally hinder the colleges’ recoveries. In small cities and communities in Kentucky, the colleges are important backbones and main employers. Their loss might be existential emotionally and financially.
“The long-term impact and actuality is the extra youngsters we lose, the decrease our price range is, and that’s going to have an effect on us for years,” she mentioned. “And so getting and having non permanent housing right here and having the infrastructure restored right here is the one means that we’re going to have the ability to proceed to assist our children and hold youngsters at school right here.”
