Full repairs to Sarasota County schools could take months

Sarasota County school leaders said they’ve come a long way to get all schools open this week after Hurricane Ian, but full repairs could take months.

All hands came together to get classrooms ready for students and staff three weeks after the storm.

"Working as one for the success of all is definitely how it worked out," said Shirley Brown, a Sarasota County school board member. "I was surprised to see the extent of the damage that was there."

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Brown said they still can’t get to every part of every school campus, repairs and rebuilding will take time.

"We’ve got seven classrooms that are still under repairs, but we’ve moved the students to other places. That was Cranberry Elementary, one of the worst schools with the flooding," said Brown.

The storm created strains on supplies, so the district is getting creative there too.

"Some of those challenges that we saw that the carpeting we had to get from Georgia. We used up all the carpeting locally," said Brown.

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Last week, school administrators shared the scope of clean up still ahead.

"Our work is not done in north county. We still have debris on campuses piled everywhere, so it will take us several months to get the campuses back to what they originally looked like in north county," said Jody Dumas, the chief operating officer of Sarasota County Schools on Oct. 10. 

It’s a temporary setback with big costs.

"We’re ballparking it at $15 million, and of course, some of that is going to be covered by insurance. But we’ve got a large deductible for hurricane damage," said Brown. "We’ve got some reserves that we can take care of that. But I think FEMA will cover a lot of the costs that are not insured. Our insurance will cover some of it, and some of our funding that we have will have to pay for it also. But most of it will either be insured or through FEMA."

During Tuesday’s school board meeting, the superintendent said it means a lot to see progress. 

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"I’ve never seen contractors work so fast in all my life. I know that everybody’s seen the show, flip your house, well this was flip your schools," said Brennan Asplen, the superintendent of Sarasota County Schools.

School administrators said some buildings still have issues with cellular service, water and plumbing problems. Other major repair work like roof damage will take weeks to complete.