After more than two weeks of missed classes due to Hurricane Florence, Horry County students returned to school Tuesday.
The top priority the first day back was making sure students were able to get safely to and from school.
The district said they did have some transportation slow downs but that overall the day went pretty smoothly.
“They were just so bored,” said Brenda Siomiak, whose two kids attend Horry County Schools. She said getting her kids back to class was a sigh of relief. “They didn’t know what to do. They wanted to do something but there was nothing you could do.”
Students have spent more time at home this school year than at school. They attended 13 days of school and were out 15.
There were some setbacks with transportation, particularly in flooded roads and also on Highway 501 Bypass around the sandbag barrier. The district has temporarily adjusted bus stop locations in flooded areas.
The district’s transportation department spent the weekend and Monday reaching out to parents who live in those areas.
“All the principals have a listing of those students, their names and what their alternative schedules are like if a parent needs to call up to the school to find out exactly the timing of some of those bus changes,” Lisa Bourcier, spokesperson for Horry County Schools said.
As for curriculum, right now schools will use three makeup days. The district works to find out if more days are needed and how all this affects the first semester.
“We have to make some schedule changes when it comes to interim report cards, those dates, some of our testing dates will need to change as well,” Bourcier said. “So as we find that information out we will definitely be pushing that out to our parents and our students.”
The school district is looking at extending the first semester to add additional days of instruction and to better balance it out with the second semester.
They hope to have more information on schedule and testing changes in the coming weeks.
Except for some roof leakages, no Horry County Schools received any serious storm damage, according to Bourcier.
Coastal Carolina University students started back their on-campus classes Monday.
A university spokesperson said many classes were able to switch to online instruction during the hurricane, but additional makeup days will be needed. These could possibly be on some Saturdays and Sundays or school holidays.
