HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Schools across the Tampa Bay Area are going into their second week of closures due to Hurricane Milton, and district leaders are working around the clock to safely reopen for students and staff.
Instead of sitting in a classroom, students at Brandon High School swept, raked, and picked up branches left behind by the storm.
Seniors David Fleming and Diamond Harrell were among the students giving back.
“I don't know. It felt like the right thing to do,” said Fleming.
“I ended up waking up early, and I'm out here helping everybody just clean the school, get it back to what it used to look like,” said Harrell.
Students, parents, faculty, staff, and community partners all pitched in to help clean the campus on Monday. The school is dealing with issues from downed trees to power outages.
"Our major issue is the external damage, thankfully,” said Brandon High principal Dr. Jeremy Klein. “We do have internal damage that took place. Some roof leakage in some of our areas, some standing water in some classrooms, but in comparison to others, we feel very thankful."
Hillsborough County Schools said about 100 schools were without power as of Monday morning, and more than a dozen schools had standing water. In addition, the district said food deliveries for breakfast and lunch are delayed, and many roads have hazards or malfunctioning traffic signals.
That all led to the decision to keep Hillsborough Schools closed on Tuesday, October 15. The goal is to reopen on Wednesday.
"I had people asking how many people do you think are going to come? My thought is if one person shows up, that's a set of hands that we didn't have, so the fact that we have this many people here doing this I think is amazing,” said Klein.
While students and staff wait for the green light to return to class, they'll keep turning up where it matters most as the community continues to heal.
"Humanity is prevailing for sure,” said Klein.