Anderson County schools return this week following Helene

ANDERSON COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) – School is back in session for some districts in the Upstate after a hiatus brought by Helene.

Officials from Anderson School District Five said students took two e-learning days and the decision was made to have four inclement weather days.

“We struggled here at the school district,” said Kyle Newton, Anderson School District Five Assistant Superintendent. “We lost power at the main office and servers went down. Accessing e-learning became difficult and beyond that we knew our community was hurting, our families were hurting and our students had to face some pretty big challenges.”

Teachers went back into office Tuesday to get back on track with lesson planning, and students went back Wednesday.

“It was a good first day back. Everybody is kind of glad to be back into a little bit of a routine,” Newton said. “For our students, that was 12 days straight without school outside of Christmas break; that’s the longest break they have all year.”

District officials said their hope is to get clearance from legislators, to not schedule make-up days.

“Our hope is at the general assembly when they reconvene in January, that they’ll waive these days, we’re pretty confident they will,” said Newton. “I know a lot of other districts are talking to their local legislatures. We’re doing the same thing.”

Schools that had power became host sites to allow the community to charge their phones, as people recovering from the storm. Anderson Five said their district gave away 16,000 meals to families.

They also said the campus enhancement team monitored buildings daily to make sure there wasn’t any extensive damage.

“We’re very fortunate. No major damage anywhere,” said Newton. “No huge issues now, huge losses or anything like that. We understand we are very fortunate. We also know that not everyone in our community can say the same thing. We know a lot of our students and our parents and guardians are without power for a very long time. We definitely empathize with them.”

Anderson District Five said officials will continue to reach out to families this week about how to get connected with resources such as their “McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Program.”

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