LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The new school year has yet to begin for thousands of students in eastern Kentucky, because of historic flash flooding.
According to the Kentucky Department of Education, over 7,500 students have yet to start school. Widespread flooding in late July damaged thousands of homes and also school buildings. This week, Kentucky Education Commissioner, Jason Glass, spent two days touring the worst hit districts.
“I think a couple of the most telling images was going through the community of Neon,” Commissioner Glass told Spectrum News 1 following his tour.
Early in his education career, Glass was a high school football coach in Hazard and remembers fondly visiting Neon-Flemming for games. Neon, which is near the Kentucky and Virginia border, was one of the hardest hit by flash flooding.
“And to drive through it now and to see it absolutely decimated by the floods and to walk on the fields at where our teams played and see all the devastation it really was apocalyptic,” Glass said.
During his two-day trip, Glass visited Jenkins Independent, Knott County and Letcher County schools. Leslie County hopes to resume classes on Sept. 6, Knott County on Sept. 13 according to the Commissioner’s office.
“We had significant impact to school buildings, with some of them having structural damage or full of mud, full of debris, things swept away depending how high the water got,” said Glass.
Glass said some of these school buildings can be “saved,” other buildings likely can’t.
“In Perry County there were two schools that were not usable, probably one forever and another one perhaps a whole year of reconstruction that will be necessary,” Glass explained.
The Perry County School District is retrofitting a previously unused building into classroom space, Glass reported. And while Letcher County schools is expected to be the last flood-affected district to reopen, Commissioner Glass says he has positive news to report.
“What had been hanging them up was their waste water system in the community. Seems like they are making great progress on getting that restored that is going to allow them to get back in session. That is really the district we’ve been most worried about.”
According to Kentucky’s Department of Education, Letcher county alone has over 1,000 displaced students.
The Kentucky General Assembly has set aside more than $200 million for disaster relief, including $40 million for school clean up, repair and “wraparound services.”