HOUSTON – Severe storms hit the Houston area hard Thursday evening, leaving widespread damage and prompting school closures in several districts.
When the storms cleared and the sunlight returned, we could see the damage done at some Houston Independent School District campuses.
Superintendent Mike Miles, along with KPRC 2 Reporter Rilwan Balogun, toured Sinclair Elementary in the Heights and Paige Elementary.
“We are not going to have kids out here, of course,” Miles said while walking through the outside buildings of the campuses where several trees fell and down power lines were scattered.
Miles also mentioned that two students were injured in Thursday’s storms when a Westside High School bus traveling on the Hardy Toll Road was “picked up and dropped” by the storm. He said one of the students sustained a fractured shoulder and the second student had cuts and bruises from broken glass flying everywhere. The bus driver was not injured. Miles said the two students and the driver were the only people on the bus during the incident.
Miles said, in total, about eight HISD schools were damaged in the storms.
“In the next two and a half days, the real key for this school is to make sure the building is 100 percent safe, the main building,” said Miles. “Fortunately, it doesn’t look like a lot of damage. Then, we need to clear the pathway so that our school’s parking lot is working like normal, and then make a plan to make sure the kids get transported on time to a different school.”
By Monday, Miles said if the damage to the campuses is still too severe and cleanup is still underway, students and teachers will be transported to a different HISD campus where classes will resume.
“The main job is that we want to keep kids safe, that’s why we are talking about this now,” Miles said. “Job number two is to make sure kids get an education through the rest of the school year. We have three weeks left and we need to make sure our kids are still learning, and they have a place to go where they are interacting with other kids, and they are safe.”
Currently, Miles said 136 HISD campuses are still without power and do not have an estimated time when power will be restored.
In a news conference Friday morning, Harris County Judge Linda Hidalgo addressed the power outages after more than 700,000 CenterPoint Energy customers reported not having power. She said Harris County residents should expect to go weeks without power, in some cases. It’s not clear if HISD campuses will have this issue.
Miles said he has established a plan for school operations next week, despite the challenges, and his goal is to have students in class by Monday.