LUMBERTON — With Robeson schools set to open on Monday, officials are still tasked with tweaking bus routes to accommodate weather-related road closures and locating students displaced by Hurricane Matthew.
Superintendent Tommy Lowry updated Gov. Pat McCrory on the state of the Public Schools of Robeson County on Thursday in a brief meeting in front of West Lumberton Elementary School, which suffered the most damage of all Robeson schools.
“The good news is this is the first day with no school closures across North Carolina. Robeson County school teachers are now going to school, and students will be going to school on Monday, three weeks after the hurricane. That’s good news and I want to compliment the superintendent and the school board for their incredible work,” McCrory said during a later appearance Thursday at Lumberton’s Sandy Grove Baptist Church.
Students have been out of class for three weeks following Hurricane Matthew, which flooded several of the system’s 42 schools and caused others to be used as emergency shelters. With the shelters closed and power and water restored, school officials were able to get to work sending students back to school.
McCrory spoke briefly with Lowry and West Lumberton Elementary Principal Tara Bullard about the challenges they continue to face.
“The discussion we’re having is what is both the short-term plan and what is the long-term plan as to what to do?” McCrory said. “We’re still trying to identify where the students are. Some of them have scattered all over the state or possibly the nation. We have issues regarding the cost of the cleanup of this school versus rebuilding and if you rebuild, where do you rebuild. These are decisions the superintendent, the county and the state hopefully make together.”
McCrory has signed an executive order asking legislators to give school systems closed by the hurricane some leeway on meeting the required 185 days students must be in school.
Bullard said some of her students have at least temporarily relocated to South Carolina, Fayetteville and Hope Mills. In addition to cleanup, keeping tabs on her students has been her biggest — and most worrisome — task since the storm hit. She said she hopes displaced students will reach out and let her know they are well.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Bullard said. “We started the Sunday or Monday after the hurricane trying to locate kids … They’re living in various motels in North Carolina because they’ve been displaced from their homes. Long range, we don’t know what’s going to happen to our students, where they’re going to end up. We just have a lot of question marks.”
Lowry said the school system will have a better idea of how many students are displaced once school resumes Monday and that social workers and guidance counselors are “working diligently” to locate students staying in shelters, hotels and elsewhere.
Parents of displaced students should contact their principal to arrange transportation. With about 80 roads still closed in Robeson County, transportation staff are reworking bus routes and bus stops. Principals will contact parents about school bus route and bus stop changes.
West Lumberton Elementary School students are the only Robeson students who will not return to their regular school. Those students, starting Monday, will temporarily attend Lumberton Junior High School on Marion Road.
At a school board meeting last week, board members voted to place mobile units near the West Lumberton school contingent on approval by the city. But progress toward that plan seems to have slowed as the school system works with FEMA to meet its guidelines for procuring the units.
“It’s bittersweet,” Bullard said. “I’m ready to see my students. Staff are ready to see the students. We feel like we’ve been separated for just such a long time … It’s good enough for us to be able to get back somewhere and be able to get our kids. Coming back and forth to the school, we just have a lot of mixed emotions about it. Its been in the community for several years. I have close ties to this school, a lot of my teachers have close ties to this school and this community. We all feel directly impacted by everything you see out here and definitely by what you see in the building. It’s just been horrible. I don’t know any other word to describe it.”
At W.H. Knuckles Elementary, which also had flooding damage, some students will report to different classrooms. Students who would normally attend class in the kindergarten or first grade wing go to the main building. Most of the damage to that school was in the cafeteria.
Lowry during a school board meeting last week said he wanted all PSRC facilities to undergo air quality testing before students and staff could return. According to Tasha Oxendine, spokesperson for the system, two-thirds of those tests had come back satisfactory by Thursday and the school system was awaiting results from remaining schools.
Staff at the school system’s central office, which was underwater for days, have been temporarily relocated to COMTech Park in Pembroke and The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Lowry said McCrory has asked him to participate in a task force to ensure that needed resources get to Robeson County.
“Gov. McCrory told me that he appreciated everything we were doing to get schools open and get kids back in school. He said he would do everything in his power to support us financially and with the resources we need for this district,” Lowry said.
