ERWIN, Tenn. — Students in Unicoi County are heading back to school on Tuesday, weeks after Hurricane Helene brought historic flooding to the area.
Students were out of school for a month. John English, the director of schools, said the students had one week off for fall break and then three weeks were canceled because of flooding.
For students at one school, going back to school looks a little different. English said there was flooding damage at Temple Hill Elementary School to a room full of servers, the HVAC system and hard wiring.
"We had to relocate that elementary school into the middle school here and that took place last week," English said. "And so we have a K-5 now coming in and joining in our 6 through 8 and we'll have a K through eight for the rest of the year."
He said it will take three to four months to fix the problems at Temple Hill and the students will finish the rest of the school year at Unicoi County Middle School.
English said students have not had any schooling online because of problems with electricity and Wi-Fi but they've encouraged students to keep learning.
"We've encouraged them to read," he said. "We had a mobile book bus that we took around to different parts of the community and we had several students come and participate with that."
He said right now, students are not expected to make these days up.
"We used our already built-in inclement weather days and then I think as we move through the winter, we'll be working with the department on that, but I think a lot of those days are going to be forgiven," English said.
Immediately after the flooding, English said the schools were also being used for different things to help the community. The middle school was a command center and the high school became a shelter. He said the high school was a shelter for about two weeks.
"Our schools are our largest buildings in the community, so we knew any kind of emergency situations, our schools became what they ended up becoming," he said. "You hope it never comes to that. But you know, there was also a sense of, we always as a school system want to be like the backbone of our community. And so we became that with our locations being used."
English said some students stayed at the high school when the flooding initially happened but he said many students also volunteered to help others.
"We had a lot of students working the shelter and we were extremely proud of that," English said. "A lot of our students showed up and worked daylight to dark serving meals, sorting clothes, and helping with distribution. Some of our staff and students were impacted so they were there for meals and certain things."