Area schools adjust plans to takein coastal refugees.
Official sites will remain undisclosed until they are activated.
Hurricane Harvey is prompting Austin area school districts to adjust back-to-school plans as campuses prepare for local inclement weather and to take coastal evacuees.
The Austin district’s LBJ High School and Liberal Arts and Science Academy, which are housed on the same campus, and the nearby Delco Center, were among the first to open their doors.
The school day at LBJ and LASA operated normally. Any evacuees housed at schools are kept in separate areas from the students.
Other Central Texas campuses scheduled to become official evacuation sites will remain undisclosed until they are activated to keep evacuees from going to an inactive site before it’s prepared.
At least one school district canceled school in anticipation of housing evacuees. New Braunfels district leaders decided to postpone the first day of school, which was scheduled for Monday.
Superintendent Randy Moczygemba said multiple campuses are anticipated to shelter evacuees, so he felt the need to postpone school by a day. The district now is tentatively scheduled to start classes on Tuesday, though teachers were still being asked to come in Monday, if safely possible.
“We are considering Hurricane Harvey to be the perfect storm and up to four of our campuses may be used as evacuation sites for both local and coastal residents,” Moczygemba said. “Due to these factors, we felt this decision was necessary.”
Bracing for bad weather, the Austin school district canceled all after-school activities Friday, Del Valle officials nixed meetthe-teacher events Friday, and the SAT college entrance exams scheduled for Saturday at various Central Texas schools were also scrapped.
The Austin school district prepared more than 1,200 sandbags for various campuses in anticipation of significant rainfall. Flash flooding has shuttered multiple campuses in previous years. Hundreds more sandbags were prepared for House Park, which flooded so badly during heavy rain in 2015 that the field was ruled unplayable for a few months.