Thousands of students are returning to Buncombe County Schools Friday, exactly four weeks after Helene hit. Buncombe County Schools’ Assistant Superintendent Jamie Johnson and Student Services Director Shanon Martin shared with WUNC Education Reporter Liz Schlemmer how educators are preparing for their return to the classroom.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What are the major factors that have made it possible for the school district to reopen?
Johnson: Just the strong desire for our district leadership and our community partners to make this possible for our students. We had lots of hurdles and lots of barriers that had to be overcome in order to even look at a reopening date.
Many of our schools across our district have been without water, without electricity, without internet – and certainly we can't safely reopen our building for students until all those things are in place. So our teams have worked around the clock, along with the water department and the electrical companies and all those teams, to make sure that our buildings have been able to safely reopen.
Some of your schools have had flood damage. How are you able to open them all this week?
Johnson: Eight of our buildings had pretty substantial damage – flood damage, that sort of thing. Our maintenance team has been phenomenal. They've ripped out floors and walls and re-carpeted and had all the [mold] mitigation... We've had all of our air quality tests over the last couple of days for any of our buildings that had flood damage, so we're going to be able to reopen every one.
What are some of the logistical challenges of returning, especially without potable water at all of those sites?
Johnson: In our schools with non-potable water, we are making arrangements with our food and nutrition team to bring in hand washing stations to make it possible for them to safely prepare meals as they can, but mostly we're going to have grab-and-go meals in those locations. We are going to feed all 22,000-plus of our students breakfast and lunch every day, even on a shortened day. So we're really excited to be able to do that.
There's also some logistical challenges with transportation and the number of roads that have been impacted since the storm came through. Our transportation team has done an amazing job of traveling all of the routes and rerouting those that need to be because of damages to the roadways. That's one of the reasons that we are beginning school for the first week, week and a half, on a two-hour delay, so that as teenage drivers are driving to school campuses, and our buses are traveling those routes, they will have more visibility.
What are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to serving students' mental health needs?
Martin: We know that all 22,000-plus students and 3,000-plus staff are going to come in having had different experiences and are going to be in a different place as we begin this recovery process. What we know will be the biggest challenge is just recognizing that everyone does not need a one-size-fits-all response, and so we worked with our counselors and social workers over the past week and our principals to make sure that we have responses for each student's needs.
What kind of guidance are you giving teachers to approach mental health on the first day back in their classroom?
Martin: We actually gave our principals, our counselors, and social workers and our teachers pocket cards, or printable pocket cards, with just some opening phrases about how to start talking with students about what they experienced. When did they feel safe, and what are they looking forward to now that they're back in school? And what are they worried about while they're back in school? So we didn't want anyone to not feel like they had the language or know what to do when they were given a question.
Our teachers across K-12 levels have a variety of different classroom activities that they, along with their building leadership, can decide what meets the needs of that classroom. If my students are in one part of the county, then their issue may just have been that they haven't been able to have showers as regularly as they used to, while some of our students and families in other parts of the community have had really devastating loss. We have made an array of options available so that people can choose the ones that best meet those needs.
Then for students who may have even more significant need to have a conversation, our counselors and social workers as well as volunteer student services professionals across the state will be available in what we call "recovery rooms" so that kids can come out and maybe have an art activity and have a conversation with a counselor to help them feel better while they're in the school building with us.
How are other school districts helping support your reopening?
Martin: We truly have been so incredibly touched by the overwhelming generosity of time, of donations – both physical donations and financial donations – from all of our public school partners across the state. We are going to welcome over 250 counselors, social workers, school psychologists, other student services directors, educational professionals, to our community.
We'll have additional hands on deck in our schools, which provides support to our counselors and social workers who also have experienced the storm, while also supporting the staff and students in those buildings. And we are really, really grateful for their willingness to leave their own very busy jobs and their own students and families to come support ours.
What do you want students and families to know about what the first day and the first week of school is going to look like?
Johnson: The first thing we would like for our students and families to know is that we recognize that there have been vastly different experiences for everyone over the past few weeks. All of our students and families have had an impact from this storm. Even students just not being in school for the last three weeks, not having structure, not having that breakfast and lunch every day, not having the social interactions – that has an impact on our families and our students.
We are committed to reconnecting with our students. We are committed to renewing their feeling of security in our buildings and with our school staff, and then re-engaging into what school looks like and to move forward, while also not forgetting or not minimizing what our students and families have gone through over the last few weeks.