Hardin Co. students return to school after eight days of closings due to flooding
HARDIN COUNTY, Tenn. — Historic flooding in Hardin County kept schools closed for eight days, but today, students returned to catch up on their learning.
“The floodwaters of the Tennessee River are starting to recede, and that means that things are slowly getting back to normal in Hardin County,” said Michael Davis, Hardin County Director of Schools.
Students in Hardin County went back to school Wednesday, after flooding shut down the district for more than a week.
“We’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve had eleven stockpile days to start our school year with,” Davis said.
Davis says that number of days built into the school calendar means the district won’t have to go into holidays, scheduled breaks or summer vacation right now.
But even though flooding is receding and many students went back to school, Davis said some students are still stuck.
“We have 12 students out of 3547, so that’s less than 1%,” Davis said.
Davis says those students are mostly in Crump, Saltillo and Morris Chapel.
Many students, even some who returned to school Wednesday, are still dealing with the effects of the flooding.
“We stayed at my grandmother’s. We came back a little bit through the week, but we had to take a boat out to the house to get a few things we needed for the rest of the week,” said Emma Pierce, a senior at Hardin County High School.
Pierce says she is glad to be back at school and working on classes.
“I’m kinda glad to be back because I didn’t see a lot of people, and I was really nervous about my schoolwork, so I wanted to come back and get stuff done,” Pierce said.
Pierce says floodwater did get in their home but not as high as her family expected.
“It got in our basement, but we knew it was gonna get to about ten feet in our basement, but it didn’t get really get that far up. It got up to about like 4 feet,” Pierce said.
Davis says that they plan to help the students who are still unable to get to school catch up on their work.
