ST. MARY PARISH — Power has been restored to all Saint Mary Parish schools and school is back in session for those students after Hurricane Francine left school buildings with flooding and power outages.
Saint Mary Parish Superintendent, Dr. Buffy Fegenbush says schools were able to reopen this week because of careful planning.
“planning starts before the storm even begins. We have a preparation plan in place with basic guidelines for situations like this” Dr.Fegenbush says.
For Tyler Jones, a resident of Franklin, he describes sending his son back to school as a balancing act as his family dealt with the impact of the hurricane.
“We kinda had a bunch of damage to our home so we’re balancing trying to fix the home and get him back in school” Jones explains.
For parent Justin Andrews, he’s just happy for his daughter's sake that she returned to school, he says
“It’s really nice knowing everyone's back in school cause my daughter loves school and she loves going everyday”.
Anna Perry, a special education teacher at Patterson Senior High School, says she had to deal with what she describes as post storm anxiety.
“It was kinda scary coming in this morning, we just got a new roof on our school cause our school got some water in it and when I opened the door I was reminded of the hurricane that came through cause they had to push all those desks aside”
Despite the visual changes to some classrooms, Dr. Fegenbush also cites the resilience of Saint Mary Parish as a key factor in getting the schools to bounce back.
“small communities can’t be beat and it really comes out in situations like this” Dr. Fegenbush states.
