WARE COUNTY, Ga. — Families are making changes as students in Ware County, Georgia miss out on weeks of school due to Helene.
More than 1,500 customers in the Ware County area are still without power, according to Georgia Power. Schools are closed until the last full week of October and planned to reopen Oct. 21, according to the school system.
Ten-year-old Carli was behind a Friendly Express in Ware County getting free supplies (a point of distribution site by the Ware County Emergency Management Agency) with her mom and little brother because she wasn't in school that day. She won’t be in school next Friday either, nor the Friday after that.
“We’ve been pretty much just doing debris clean-up for the last week,” said Rana Zauner.
Zauner and Carli’s mother, Cassie Waters, are neighbors in Bickley. Their kids haven’t been in school, or homeschooled, in Zauner’s case, but they haven’t been bored.
“We kind of take our team of kids and go do the clean-up,” Zauner said.
Ware County Schools officials said multiple schools are still without power and school system workers are repairing damages and inspecting school kitchens and water supplies. A spokesperson said Friday there hasn’t been discussion yet over how the lost school days will be made up, but usually there’s guidance from the state department of education. It helps that the week after next was supposed to be Fall Break.
In the meantime, if families have internet access, they’re encouraged to use educational programs on Clever, the school system’s digital learning platform.
“This has been absolutely surreal,” said Zauner. “I never thought we would encounter anything like this.”
While Zauner and Waters’s kids may not be learning in a classroom, they say they’re still learning a lot about their community.
“All of Ware County’s come together,” said Waters. “Towards the end we’ll probably start working on some stuff but we’re just trying to help everybody in the community.”
The school system encourages families to stay tuned to all of their official communication channels. This week they posted on Facebook when free hot meals were supplied at schools.