HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Hillsborough County schools reopened on Thursday for the first time since Hurricane Milton.
“We want to get back to that sense of normalcy as soon as we can, get our students back in school,” said Van Ayres, Superintendent of Hillsborough County Public Schools.
Several schools in Hillsborough County had some damage from Milton.
“At one point, we had 170 schools without power,” said Ayres.
Over the past few days, district staff have been working around the clock to get schools ready for students to return on Thursday.
“It takes the whole community, it takes everyone, right? So that’s what’s really been phenomenal about this. You know we have this mantra, 'Hillsborough Strong. Stronger Together,'” said Ayres.
Opening schools again took a while because many served as storm shelters for days, like Sickles High School.
“We probably served anywhere between 8,000 and 9,000 meals in those five days because we were serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and each day we progressively got more evacuees,” said Steve Lunin, Student Nutrition Manager for Sickles High School.
At Sickles, school staff estimate they had more than 1,400 evacuees. Many employees pitched in to help the community.
“Everybody was here. We worked long hours, 16, 17, 18-hour days,” said Lunin.
As part of the transition to welcome students back, on Wednesday, teachers were in their classrooms, getting them set up, and catching up on their lessons.
Lisa Gaspar is an ESE teacher at Sickles. She’s prepared to talk to students if they need to about how the hurricane may have impacted them.
“I think asking them how it affected them and if they were scared and then maybe say, 'Hey, this place, this school, this classroom was a location for people who were also scared and had a place to go,'” said Gaspar.
Teachers are also now figuring out how to cover missed material, and the district is working on a plan to make up the days they had to close schools.
“A lot of our teachers are very strict as far as their curriculum and knowing what teachers have to cover by a certain date. So I know they’re planning on how to catch our students back up to be successful on exams,” said Krista Luloff, Principal at Sickles High School.
Overall, school staff want families to know they’re ready to move forward.
“I just want them to know that we worked really hard to make sure that our school is safe and ready for them to return, get back to normal,” said Luloff.
Guidance counselors and social workers across the district will be ready to work with students who’ve been displaced because of the storm or are dealing with feelings of anxiety after going through back-to-back hurricanes.
