But while school officials are concerned about the disruption, which comes on the heels of months-long pandemic-related shutdowns and resulting learning loss, they’re hopeful the mitigation efforts they put in place will minimize further academic setbacks. 

The district, which serves some 90,000 children at more than 100 campuses, suffered tens of millions of dollars in damage from Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28 and went on to across the state.

While the rest of the nation has moved past crisis coverage, three schools within the district remain in turmoil after they were particularly hard hit by the 150 mile-per-hour storm. Hundreds of students were assigned to other campuses — but they didn’t go alone. 

“One thing we did that a lot of other districts in Florida did not do, was that we kept all of our kids with their teachers,” rather than dividing them among several campuses, adding a few students per class, said Armor Persons, the district’s newly elected school board chair. “We kept them all together with their teacher — and their principal — even though they were sharing a school with another school.”

Administrators hoped this familiarity would help students manage their new environment, he said: Some children won’t return to their original campus for several more months.

Ian severely damaged the roof of Hector A. Cafferata Jr. Elementary, causing rainwater to seep into the building. Students have gone back to the site, but not to their original schoolhouse: They’re learning inside 36 portable classrooms with no plan yet for a lasting solution. Board members will consider options this month and decide on a path forward in February, district officials said. 

The Sanibel School, located on a tourist-heavy and treasured barrier island, took on four feet of water amid a storm surge that swallowed shoreline houses whole. While the school required an extensive amount of work — in addition to mold remediation and electrical repairs, its drywall and flooring also required replacement — the building itself has been deemed structurally sound. Students are expected to return to the campus in the coming weeks.

But that won’t be the case for Fort Myers Beach Elementary, which, according to Persons, took on 14 feet of water. It will likely be the last to recover, he said: He doesn’t expect students back on site until the fall. Administrators have not yet determined the campus’s fate. A portion of the site, which contains five buildings, is a historic landmark, complicating its restoration.

District officials will soon decide among several options, all of which call for it to stabilize or restore the historic portion of the campus. Beyond that, they can reopen using portable classrooms, build a mostly new campus, board up the school for the time being or fix the property and sell it with costs ranging up . 

The beloved, high-performing K-5 school, which parents have , was among the district’s smallest with just 77 students prior to the hurricane, down from roughly 200 two decades ago. The population shrunk by 30 in the weeks that followed the storm, with many students transferring to private schools or a homeschool setting. Projections released in 2021 showed it was expected to reach 81 students by 2031. But the school’s future remains unclear.

District officials are factoring in its small size when considering their plans for the campus, which is expensive to run. Fort Myers Mayor Dan Allers told The 74 he strongly opposes closing the school, calling it one of the best in Lee County.

“The school has been a part of the Fort Myers Beach community for generations,” Allers said. “Grandparents that went to that school are now taking their grandkids there. To take that heritage and quality of education from a community would be a complete disservice.”

Greg Longenhagen, who lives with his family near Sanibel Island, where his wife grew up, said the hurricane’s aftermath has been tough. Not only did his own home suffer some $100,000 in damage, most of which he expects to pay out-of-pocket, but his son has had to transition to a new school. 

Still, he said, this most recent closure and relocation has been nowhere near as difficult as the pandemic-era shutdowns: Both of his children saw their grades tank when schools closed for months back in 2020 and 2021. Neither has suffered similarly this year, despite the upheavals. 

And while his son’s new campus, San Carlos Park Elementary School, is much further away than the one on Sanibel Island, at least he’s still with his friends, Longenhagen said, adding he was pleased with the district’s strategy. 

“I really think they did a good job,” said Longenhagen, director of the , which suffered millions in storm damage. “We had no idea what was going to happen. We had no bridge to Sanibel, no way to get in, no water, no electricity.”

While Persons is concerned about additional learning loss, the district fared better than most in math and science, he said: And, even prior to Ian, it had already added additional staff to help struggling students improve.

But even this effort has proven problematic. 

“Like other schools across the nation, we are facing a shortage of teachers,” he said. “It’s not a lot, but enough that it makes everything more difficult.”

The cost of repairs is also a consideration, according to district spokesman Rob Spicker. The district is still fighting for additional coverage from damage sustained as a result of Hurricane Irma in 2017. It’s recovered much of the payout — roughly $27 million of $31 million total — and hopes to claw back even more.

Administrators took a different approach this time around, Spicker said, starting the claims process a day before the storm began. 

“We have worked closely with our insurance company and another company familiar with FEMA to maximize our reimbursement,” he said. “That was a lesson learned from Irma.”

After Hurricane Ian slammed against the Southwest coast of Florida, several school districts suspected that damage, flooding, power outages and other difficulties might mean students may never get back into their classrooms.

That was about five weeks ago. Now, school districts in Lee, Sarasota, DeSoto and Charlotte have slowly begun recovering from the impact of a Category 4 storm. Some schools have recovered faster, sending kids back to classes as early as Oct. 10.

But schools in other hard-hit areas struggled, going weeks without any instruction, constructing new teaching facilities, learning at home with virtual instruction and attending different schools while repairs continued.

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Lee County

Some school buildings are not operational yet, but students are largely back in an in-person learning environment, according to Irma Lancaster, director of strategic communication for Lee County public schools.

“Students returned to a learning environment in phases during the week of October 17. The first group started on Monday, and by the end of the week on that Friday the 21st, all students were in a learning environment,” she said in an email to the Phoenix.

But with some of the damages to school buildings still being assessed, the Lee County school district had to get creative with how to get students back into a learning environment as quickly as possible.

For some students, that meant attending different campuses. And for others, that meant temporarily switching to remote learning.

“Students from Fort Myers Beach Elementary and the Sanibel School are currently attending the campus of San Carlos Park Elementary,” Lancaster explained. “Diplomat and Lexington Middle Schools needed additional remediation. Students were placed in virtual learning from Oct 21 to Oct 31. They returned to campus on Nov. 1.

She continued: “Students of Hector Cafferata (Jr. Elementary school) are currently split onto two campuses due to their building still undergoing significant remediation due to damages. K-2 students are at Hancock Creek Elementary, 3-5 are at Pelican (Elementary).”

That said, the district is working on building temporary school structures to bring the displaced students and staff onto one site, and the district will have a school board meeting to discuss those costs for the district.

Lancaster said that some individual families may not yet have returned to school “due to transferring out of the area, or perhaps storm related situations have prevented their families from returning.”

In order to make up for some of the lost school days due to the hurricane, the Florida Department of Education have approved a new calendar year for Lee County schools, which swaps out two early release days for full days and adds three hurricane make-up days including on Veteran’s Day.

Sarasota County

Sarasota school district was the first of the heavily impacted school district to have a tentative return to school schedule, with 32 of the closed schools reopening by Oct. 10, and 12 schools planning to reopen by Oct. 17.

While most of the schools were able to open by that projected timelines, two schools were delayed.

“Due in part to supply chain delays and other unforeseen circumstances, Cranberry Elementary School in North Port and Englewood Elementary School in Englewood had to reopen on Tuesday, October 18,” Kelsey Whealy, communications staffer with the Sarasota County school district, told the Phoenix in an email.

“All traditional public school students missed at least nine days of school, with those attending a school with a delayed reopening missing either 15 or 16 days.”

Unlike Lee County, students in Sarasota schools did not revert to remote learning,

“The district made learning resources available online for those able to utilize supplemental materials – much of the county was without power & internet for a significant amount of time after the hurricane hit,” she said.

She says that some school buildings still have structural damage, and that students and staff are only working in parts of the building that are safe for learning.

Whealy also noted that some in the community are still in recovery but that their traditional public schools are “have reported strong attendance numbers.”

The district website reports that the 2022-23 school calendar has not been changed as of now.

DeSoto County

Many schools in DeSoto were able to reopen by Oct. 17, according to their website. But two schools, DeSoto County High School and Nocatee Elementary Schools, were expected to reopen as late as between Oct. 24 and as late as Nov. 7.

But according to district updates, the elementary school was able to reopen by Oct. 18, and the high school reopened on Oct 26.

According to an update last week: “We are excited to confirm our high school will reopen on Wednesday, October 26! To bring students back sooner, part of our high school building will be blocked and off limits as repairs are finalized. Classrooms near the office, nurse’s station, and towards JROTC will be temporarily relocated to other classrooms in the high school.”

Charlotte County

According to a community update on Oct. 27, Charlotte County’s last closed building, Port Charlotte Middle School, was able to reopen on Nov. 1. That said, the district says there will be a temporary school structure built in any case.

“Port Charlotte Middle School staff and students will be returning to their normal classrooms initially. In the coming days the Port Charlotte Middle family will begin to see a temporary campus being constructed,” according to the Oct. 27 update. “Once completed, the staff and students will relocate into the temporary facility.  The staff and students will be housed in the temporary facility until PCMS is either permanently repaired or rebuilt.”

The Phoenix has reached out to the district for clarity on why students can return to the school building but still need a temporary structure and is awaiting response.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

In Southwest Charlotte County, there are 10 elementary schools, four middle schools and three high schools. But no students or staff are in them because of Hurricane Ian.

Likewise, DeSoto County, with just seven schools, also are closed. Same goes for Hardee, Lee and Sarasota counties.

In all, the Florida Department of Education has reported five Florida school districts that remain shut down “until further notice,” leaving almost 168,000 schoolchildren unable to attend classes for an unknown amount of time.

Like the early days of COVID-19, when schools were shuttered and children relied on online learning, it was a dangerous time that disrupted the lives of families, students, teachers and staff.

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Now, the disruptions come from a massive storm, Hurricane Ian, that has caused dozens of deaths and a swath of devastation. The remedies and recovery efforts will face challenges for Florida’s education system — everything from bus routes to internet connections to access to learning for students who have already lost instruction in recent years.

‘Ground Zero for Ian’

So far, Sarasota County has a tentative timeline over the next two weeks projecting when their schools will reopen. But the other four districts don’t have similar information.

As to Lee, Charlotte, DeSoto, and Hardee schools, the question is: When will those kids get back into the classroom? The answer is: It’s unknown.

The Phoenix reached out to all those school districts for more information, but they haven’t provided a response.

The damage caused by Ian, which battered Southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm, has created significant hurdles, according to school district websites.

Electricity connections, flooding, campuses being used as emergency shelters and damages to school buildings are among many challenges Southwest Florida school districts are facing, according to district websites and local officials.

The Charlotte County School District posted an update to its website on Monday that reads: “The damage caused by Hurricane Ian is extensive. We are continuing to assess our schools and will know soon the extent of the damage.

“Again, please note there will be no school until further notice. No staff or students should be on our campuses as many are unsafe.”

Charlotte has 16,400 public students enrolled, according to the Florida Department of Education website.

The DeSoto County School District, with only 4,568 students, reports on its website: “Due to the flooding and damage to multiple facilities, DeSoto County School District will remain closed until further notice. We will communicate a timeline for reopening schools as soon as we can safely welcome students and staff back into our buildings.”

A Monday video message from Lee County School Supt. Christopher Bernier reported that some schools may be ready to open, others need “minimal work” and others require “significant repairs.” And some are “beyond repair.”

Lee County is the largest of the five school districts, with 97,264 students, and it was hit head-on during the storm.

“We were ground zero for Ian,” Bernier said. “We were and still are significantly impacted.”

“While we are not open this week, we are certainly not waiting until January,” Bernier said. “We are actively working on plans for those damaged sites that include potentially relocating students, teachers and staff. We are discussing these plans with the Florida Department of Education and ask for their resources and connections in order to help our districts become viable as quickly as possible.”

The Hardee County school district website offers no additional details, other than schools are closed “until further notice.” There are 4,941 students enrolled in Hardee County.

Sarasota County’s tentative plans

As with Sarasota County, the only district with a projected timeline to reopen, still doesn’t have some schools opening until the middle of October.

According to the website: “Sarasota County Schools will reopen in phases. Phase 1 will include all traditional public schools in and north of Venice. Phase 2 will be all our traditional public schools in Englewood and North Port.”

The district reports that 32 traditional public schools are projected to open by Monday, Oct 10, and 10 traditional public schools are projected to open by Oct 17.

The Sarasota County School District has 43,896 students enrolled.

The Sarasota district held a press conference Tuesday morning to discuss further details of the school reopening plans and challenges.

Sarasota School Supt. Brennan Asplen laid out some of the difficulties in the county: Two schools were still being used as emergency shelters and four schools were still experiencing power outages. In some areas, debris and flooding have created unsafe walking conditions for students. Also, staff and teachers might be dealing with their own damaged properties or lost homes, among other concerns.

As for academics, the district is creating “instructional continuity plans” and will be offering some resources for families to use while students are at home waiting for schools to reopen, according to Sarasota’s Chief Academic Officer, Chris Renouf.

“There may be some schools that again have portable classrooms, certain places on their campus that are on inhabitable, and so again they have to proactively plan behind scenes to go ahead and how do they address that, plan moving forward, so that instructional continuity is not affected,” Renouf said Tuesday.

He said of the at-home learning opportunities and resources:

“We want to make sure that folks know what resources, what activities, what recommendations, what electronic resources are available should they have access to those resources — some will, some won’t,” he said. “But we want to make sure that while students are at home, that there are learning opportunities that can exist and continue to occur while they’re off campus.”

Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. indicated Monday that the five school districts might struggle to reopen this week, the Phoenix previously reported, but did not make clear that they will be closed “until further notice,” as the department’s website states now.

The Florida Department of Education reported that 68 of Florida’s 74 traditional school districts, lab schools and virtual schools were open as of Tuesday, with two more districts expected to reopen by the end of the week.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .