HAZARD, Ky. — School will look a little different for some students in Perry County.
Two of the district’s schools will join under one roof after floods washed out their buildings.
Buckhorn School 2022 graduate Samantha Turner and sophomore Kyli Short blew up balloons at Perry County Park on Sunday.
Purple balloons represented Buckhorn school and the blue ones represented Robinson Elementary School.
Both of the schools were washed out by flooding two weeks ago.
“These teachers have worked their whole lives for this and I couldn’t imagine everything I had being stripped away from me so I wanted to just kind of step up and see what we could do to get them back on their feet and let them know that you know they’re loved,” says Turner.
Turner and Short organized a teacher shower to support teachers forced to rebuild their classrooms from scratch.
“I just want to give something back to them. I know I can’t bring it all back, but hopefully, with this, it’ll help out a little,” says Short. “Those teachers have kind of helped raise me throughout the years.”
One teacher a little more than others.
“I grew up in Robinson. My mom’s a teacher there and so we would spend, until seven o’clock there every single night her first couple years, so seeing it like that destroyed it just broke me so I wanted to help in some way,” says Short.
Like Short’s mom, Perry County teachers are just thankful to still have a job.
They will temporarily house the two schools out of AB Combs, an unused school building owned by the school district.
The shower is providing a few things to get them started in their new teaching space.
“It’s wonderful. We don’t have anything, any supplies whatsoever, so this is a blessing,” says Buckhorn School special education teacher Denise Colwell.
“I’ve cried off and on for two weeks about it. I know lots of other people have lots more things lost than that, but I’ve taught for 25 years at Buckhorn, and every memory and everything that I had with my teaching career is all gone. So it’s been emotional.”
Over the years, these teachers have taught Turner many things.
She says their biggest lesson was compassion.
“Teachers have always been my role models. I’ve never had a different one. Teachers have been my superheroes,” says Turner.
Samantha is taking classes to become a teacher. She hopes to one day teach in perry county and impact as many lives as her teachers have.
A wishlist has been set up to support teachers at the two schools.