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BRANDON D. OLIVER/Palatka Daily News – Putnam County School District officials stand near the entrance of Browning-Pearce Elementary School on Tuesday shortly after the school opened as an emergency shelter.
Schools will remain closed today to allow Putnam County School District officials to ensure buildings and bus routes are safe for students and employees to return.
Despite bleak forecasts Tuesday afternoon for Hurricane Idalia’s impact on Putnam County, the storm’s path shifted westward, hitting Putnam with windy conditions, intermittent rain and gray skies that began to break Wednesday evening.
Despite the county’s good fortune with Idalia, Superintendent Rick Surrency said he wants to make sure district buildings, bus routes and other infrastructure don’t present any hazards.
“We sent a message to principals to assess any possible damage in the schools,” Surrency said Wednesday afternoon. “So they’re going to do that tomorrow. I contacted the high school principals to let them know if they wanted to, they can do afternoon practices tomorrow.”
On Monday, the district announced schools would be closed Wednesday and today because of Idalia. The district also mandated extracurricular activities would be canceled starting Tuesday.
However, Surrency allowed extracurricular practices to resume today because Idalia had much less of an impact than county and weather officials previously believed.
While the school district is resuming classes Friday, St. Johns River State College, which has campuses in Palatka, Orange Park and St. Augustine, as well as a hefty online presence, will resume operations at their normal times today, according to a Facebook post from the college.
As for the school district, Surrency said, bus drivers will use today to drive their routes to report whether the roads they will drive when school reopens Friday are safe.
At about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Surrency said he wasn’t aware of any structural or road damage, but it was still too early for him to be sure everything was in tip-top shape.
“I’m not aware of anything right now,” he said. “That’s why I’m glad we have that extra day.”
Officials can also do an extra inspection of the six schools that were used as emergency shelters. At 5 p.m. Tuesday, the following schools opened as shelters:
– Browning-Pearce Elementary, 100 Bear Blvd. in San Mateo.
– Jenkins Elementary, 251 County Road 315 in Interlachen.
– Kelley Smith Elementary, which is for people with special needs, 141 Kelley Smith School Road in Palatka.
– Middleton-Burney Elementary, 1020 Huntington Road in Crescent City.
– Ochwilla Elementary, which is pet-friendly, 299 State Road 21 in Hawthorne.
– Q.I. Roberts Junior-Senior High School, 901 State Road 100 in Florahome.
Surrency was willing to keep shelters open today, but he decided Wednesday to shut down the facilities as the worst of the storm was over.
“About 2 o’clock (Wednesday), we started shutting them down,” Surrency said. “Some of them were sparsely populated, but Ochwilla and Middleton-Burney were the most populated. It was a process, but we should all be closed down now.”
Surrency estimated about 50 people showed up to Ochwilla and more than 30 people took refuge from the storm at Middleton-Burney.
Although Idalia seems to have had a minor impact on Putnam, Surrency said he was glad the district went the extra mile in preparing for the storm.
“With the uncertainty about the path of the storm, we always over-prepare to make sure we’re on top of things,” Surrency said. “We have a real good system set in place.”
For school district information, visit putnamschools.org or the Putnam County School District Facebook Page.