Harvey a learning experience for ISD




Inside a portable classroom, Brundrett Middle School Principal James Garrett talks to a group of students on Oct. 16, 2017, which was the day Port Aransas ISD reopened following a seven-week closure due to damage caused by Hurricane Harvey. Staf photo by Zach Perkins

Inside a portable classroom, Brundrett Middle School Principal James Garrett talks to a group of students on Oct. 16, 2017, which was the day Port Aransas ISD reopened following a seven-week closure due to damage caused by Hurricane Harvey. Staf photo by Zach Perkins

School officials learned on the fly how to deal with building damage, FEMA and insurance in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, said Port Aransas ISD Superintendent Sharon McKinney.

“I’ve learned some lessons for before the storm, but I learned more about the afterthe storm stuff,” McKinney said.

She said her primary focus would be to get the school back open as soon as possible.

“If I found out schools were damaged, obtaining portable buildings would be the first thing I would do,” McKinney said.

The superintendent said securing the portable classrooms used at PAISD was an eye-opening experience for her while the district was closed for seven weeks because of damage to the normal school buildings, which couldn’t be used.

“I’ve never been involved in securing portables for a school district. … That whole process is much more complicated than you think. It’s also much more expensive than you would think because of the utilities, mainly,” McKinney said. “In your mind, you think that we have electricity, so we can just hook it up to our electricity, but no, it doesn’t work that way.”

The portables must be wired separately, in addition to electrical boxes which have to be placed outside of the portable buildings.

She said despite the obstacles of obtaining temporary buildings, she thinks she and her staff did the right thing by getting portables as fast as they could, so students could return to Port Aransas. Students returned to PAISD in October. Most students enrolled in other districts while PAISD was closed.

“But, my eyes are more open, and I know what to expect when it comes to portables now,” McKinney said. “If we wouldn’t have brought in portables, we wouldn’t have been back until January, or maybe even next school year. The schools are the heart of this town, and we needed our students back.”

Though H.G. Olsen Elementary School and Port Aransas High School students have been back in their normal buildings since January, Brundrett Middle School students still haven’t returned to regular school buildings. The middle school is expected to re-open in August.

McKinney said another major learning experience for her was not to worry about FEMA until after repairs are done on buildings that suffered damage.

She said the process of dealing with FEMA was much different from what she initially expected.

“I just didn’t know it’s all about reimbursement, having never been through anything like this,” she said. “They don’t come in and do things for you, and then pay for it. It’s more like, if you have already done the repairs, and then you do all the paperwork and procurement for it, then they might repay you.”

Nearly nine months after Harvey, school officials still meet with FEMA representatives weekly with hopes of getting more money for damage, McKinney said. The district has received some FEMA funds, mainly for asbestos removal.

Even with learning how to deal with FEMA, McKinney said she has heard that PAISD has been one of the only districts to receive money from FEMA thus far.

“We are ahead of the game,” she said.

McKinney said it also was a learning experience to find out when the U.S. Department of Education announces funds for Texas schools affected by Hurricane Harvey, that money doesn’t directly go to the schools. The Department of Education recently announced $693 million in funds for districts affected by hurricanes and wildfires in 2017. (See the May 9 issue of the South Jetty for the full story.)

“The money gets released to the Texas Education Agency, and then Texas decides how the money gets released to the districts,” she said. “So, you actually have to go through the state to get some of those funds. It’s something I was just unaware of.”

School buses also were damaged by storm surge.

“It’s definitely in our plans to get the best vehicles off the island, but we just didn’t have the time,” she said.

Most of the buses had to be repaired for water damage.

“We had a plan in place to take the buses to Sinton and Skidmore,” said Pete Cowen, maintenance and transportation director at PAISD. “We had drivers set up for each bus, but there just wasn’t enough time to take them up there and get back.”

So, if another storm comes along with the potential magnitude of Harvey, Cowen said his crews will start working on removing the buses from Mustang Island 72 hours in advance of landfall.

“The plan we had in place was spot on,” he said. “We just didn’t have enough time to execute the plan.”

Being that Hurricane Harvey was only a tropical storm into the final day before it made landfall in Port Aransas, Cowen said anytime a tropical storm is projected, he’s going to look at it a little differently.

“It’s going to be nerve-racking,” he said. “I don’t think we will board the schools, or get the buses out right away for a tropical storm, but once it gets to a Category 1 or 2, we most likely will, just because of what we learned from Harvey.”

PAISD crews boarded up school buildings on Thursday, Aug. 24, once learning Harvey had been upgraded to a major storm.

Only two windows broke during the hurricane.

Using emergency catastrophe crews helped get students back in less than two months, Cowen said.

“They (Gerloff Company Inc. Catastrophe Management) took a huge burden off myself, the superintendent and the financial director, where we could just focus on the students and getting them back in school,” he said.

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