Schools closed at least through Tuesday
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on October 10, 2016 10:04 AM
Nearly half of the public schools in Wayne County were still without power Sunday afternoon, as district officials canceled classes for today, later extending that through Tuesday, with the superintendent spending the latter part of the weekend assessing the situation while praising local emergency preparedness efforts.
"I can't speak enough about the emergency preparedness folks -- in their plans and what they're doing," Dr. Michael Dunsmore said. "I have been blown away with what they have been doing to help people in the community and keeping the messages out there and anything they can do to help us. I have never seen anything like this."
Dunsmore took over as superintendent last year. Hurricane Matthew is his first major weather event in Wayne County.
"We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but we've got great people here."
The storm that ripped through the county created power outages and still has the potential to wreak more havoc on roadways as the waterways rise over the next few days.
"We canceled Monday and Tuesday, and that is just to buy us some time," Dunsmore said. "Personally, I have been in 11 school buildings today. We have teams going out Monday. We're just trying to assess the damage."
His primary concern, he said, is the safety of the students and their families. He also wants to be sure all the school buildings are safe when they return.
"We have 36 buildings we're going to do an assessment on right after lunch, come up with a plan to get everybody back safely because at this point we don't know how the roads are yet," he said. "We're about two feet over (Hurricane) Floyd, and they were out nine days.
"With 50 percent with no power and 40 percent with no water, we'll take a look at the buildings, then the roads, then the infrastructure and make sure everything is safe. That's one of my arguments with the state -- they push us to get back for the calendar and back for the (assessment) tests. That's kind of secondary."
Administrators were also concerned about their schools, some venturing out as soon as the storm passed.
Fremont STARS Elementary School was in line as a possible evacuation site, but had some water issues of its own. Principal Sheila Wolfe went to the school Sunday afternoon to assess the situation.
"One room with leaking ceiling and a little water in the stairwells," she wrote on Facebook.
Thanks to efforts made last week, though, it was not worse, she said afterward.
"Kudos to the maintenance department," she said. "They were out there Wednesday, Thursday and Friday doing repairs in our hallway in front of the cafeteria. They took care of that because we didn't have one leak.
Cathy Fulcher, principal at Eastern Wayne Middle School, also made a trip to check on her school.
"I feel obligated to do that," she said. "But everything's good at our school."
There was a little flooding, "just a little bit under the doorway, but that's not bad," she said.
At Eastern Wayne High School, Principal Lee Johnson said staff had spent the bulk of Friday afternoon taking precautions -- "covering up everything, bringing in trash cans, better to be safe than sorry," she said.
"Eastern Wayne's in good shape," she said Sunday afternoon. "We don't have any power, but we just had a little bit of water in some classrooms, no structural damage.
Dillard Middle School was one of the schools that still had power, said assistant principal Jamel Jones.
"Sonja (Emerson, principal) went out there and she told me everything there looked good," he said. "We did have a little water that got under our commons area door. But we had minimal damage to the school, nothing severe."
"My school fared very well," said Julie West, principal at Northeast Elementary School. "It's high and dry, and we have electricity but no water."
Some of her students may have challenges, though, she said, citing reports that portions of Wayne Memorial Drive had "huge sections that washed out."
"Those students would be in my district," she said. "I know that there's a lot of roads and bridges that would be vulnerable at this point."
The district's transportation department will have a particularly challenging job, said Ken Derksen, the schools' public information officer.
"(Director Robert) Lee will be working with his department to make alternate routes because we know there's several roads that have been washed out near our schools," he said.
"We still have some schools that do not have water, some that do not have power, some that do not have water or power."
While schools remain closed, the central office staff will be moved to Dillard Middle School today because the administrative offices on Royall Avenue are still without power.