As public schools remain closed in eight counties in Florida’s Panhandle after Hurricane Michael, private schools are also picking up the pieces left by the storm’s aftermath.
Several private schools also sustained major damage, with some having to rebuild. Step Up For Students, a nonprofit that administers the state’s tax credit scholarship program among others (and publishes this blog), identified 26 private schools that are in the areas most affected by the hurricane. As of Wednesday, Step Up officials say they had only been able to reach nine of those schools.
One school in the Catholic Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee — St. John’s Catholic School in Panama City — was hit hard by the storm.
Mike Juhas, the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese superintendent, said St. John’s was significantly damaged and is uninhabitable. Classrooms were flooded with debris and water. The goal now is to move students to St. Bernadette Catholic Parish in Panama City until St. John’s can be fixed.
“It is so important to have that level of normalcy to go back and attend school,” Juhas said.
St. John’s serves 165 students, with nearly half taking advantage of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, which helps low-income and working-class students pay tuition.
Juhas said the other eight Catholic schools in the Diocese received minimal damage. He called it a challenging time for the community, but had no doubt St. John’s would be rebuilt.
“We feel blessed for all the support and the prayers,” he said. “We are going to come back stronger.”
Elsewhere in the Panhandle, Alice Sanderson also feels blessed and believes it could have been worse.
The director of admissions at Robert F. Munroe Day School is relieved that all 285 students at her school are safe and sound after the storm barreled its way toward Quincy. But Munroe, like St. John’s, was severely damaged.
“Our art building was blown off of its foundation,” said Sanderson. “Our lower school math, social studies and language arts building was completely destroyed by a tree.”
Two local churches in the area have offered their buildings for classrooms, Sanderson said. As a result, classes are back in session in those locations. She hopes the four classrooms will be rebuilt in two to four weeks.
But she said there are challenges.
“The contents of those classrooms that were destroyed were not insured,” she said. “We are going to have quite a bit of need financially as we rebuild our campus.”
The community has rallied around the school, Sanderson said. She spoke of teachers who are coming in on a regular basis to clean up debris at the school and people from the community who are helping to serve lunches.
“We feel very much cushioned from every side from the community,” she said.
Local schools are also lending a hand in communities.
Crossroad Academy is one of those schools. An “A” rated charter school in Gadsden County, the school wanted to give back to the community, according to De’Garryan Andrews, English teacher at the school.
School officials recently came together and served hot meals and drinks to those in the community.
“In light of these recent tragedies we can come together and try to be a pillar of the community like schools should be,” Andrews said.
