Lee County schools took a major hit from Hurricane Ian along with the rest of the SWFL area.
Superintendent of schools Dr. Christopher Bernier says many of the district's school buildings have water intrusion and structural damage. He will be touring them in coming days to assess the damage.
It's going to take weeks to get the schools reopened, he says, and some schools may require a complete rebuild. He would hope to help feed the school communities but at the moment they have no power and water to operate the kitchens, and of course the storm affected school district staff, who suffered terrible losses in the storm.
Here is the transcript of our conversation:
Dr. Bernier: “One thing I want to try to get across is, you know, we run a people business. It's all about kids and all about families, but it's all about our people. And our people have been impacted by this storm as well. We have people without homes, we have people without roofs who our community relies on to educate, lead the schools, drive a school bus. And our responsibility is to make sure that our people are in a position where they can be taken care of so that they then in turn can come back to their jobs, which is taking care of the young people of this community.
I'll be with education Commissioner Manny Diaz and the Lieutenant governor later today. We're going to do an aerial view and try to get out, see some of the schools that I can't get access to yet.
When you talk about the assessment of he school buildings. We have to determine their operational status. As you know, we're down both with electricity and water.
I know that that's progressing within Lee County and more and more people are being restored and that is a great compliment to the brave men and women who are out restoring power lines.
Once we have, but before we even have power and water, we need to go into our buildings and assess whether there's been window damage, wall damage, roof damage, has water come in from the outside through windows and roofs, or is it from a storm surge? We need to get our buildings dried out, cleaned out. Make sure that materials that could mold and otherwise need to be removed and properly taken away and then buildings need to be cleaned.
Once power is restored, then we can go ahead and make sure that we dry out our buildings completely, and then we can go ahead and begin to determine the operational status of all of our schools. Keep in mind we have some schools that may be so significantly damaged that they're going to need a complete rebuild if that's what we choose to do.”
WGCU: “Kids are going to lose some educational opportunity. What would you like to see your kids doing between now and whenever they can get back to school?”
Dr. Bernier: “What I’d like is for our students first and foremost to be responsible family members. Listen to their parents because in some cases there's a great deal of work to do at homes and their houses in order to get them also in back into a condition where they can be lived in. And we do rely on our children, depending on their appropriate age, to be of assistance as soon as we can pull the rest of our academic team together. We'll begin to look toward information that can be provided to parents as to what they could work with their students on in the meantime, but our goal is to get as open as quickly as possible.
I can't put a timeline on it at this time. But worked so hard to get the schools open this year and get started this year with a very open atmosphere, welcoming our parents and volunteers back. We want to try to get back to that normal as quickly as possible. The timeframes of that and what we do in the meantime are still. being planned and developed.”
WGCU: “Anything else that you would like to add?”
Dr. Bernier: “Yeah, I'd like to send something out to the community related to our employees. I want our community to understand that this has impacted our entire community, including the employees of the school system, of the employees of Emergency Management, of our fire departments. You know, no one, no one in this storm has been immune. But specifically to my employees, I want them to understand that while we will be closed for the foreseeable period of time that their insurance, their benefits, their paychecks will continue to be supplied to them on a regular basis.
We are closed for now, but we have work for everyone to do to get us to reopen, so I want our families first and foremost to take care of themselves. You can't take care of someone else until you take care of yourself. And once they've stabilized their home and other environments, we will have the opportunity for them to come back to work and to help us with the recovery.
But in the meantime, I want them to know the payday was today, their paychecks are in the bank and there will be another paycheck on the 15th. And that will happen or is regularly scheduled. I just want them to know that we have a great sense of caring about them as we have, as we have for the entire community.”
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.
