Students in Southbury returned to the classroom this week as crews continue to rebuild after last week’s historic flooding.
Students in Southbury returned to the classroom this week as crews continue to rebuild after last week's historic flooding.
The students are back, but the work to rebuild is far from over. There are road closures and issues to the infrastructure in town. On top of that, there are homes with major damage and the families are left to pick up the pieces.
You can imagine how difficult this is for families with children in the school system, but the superintendent of Region 15 said he felt it was important to return to a sense of normalcy.
"When a community’s in crisis, we feel that routine is even more important," said Joshua Smith, the superintendent of Region 15 Schools.
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In order to bring students back, they relied on public works crews to repave and reopen some critical roads. Those roads were damaged during last week's flooding.
Smith said it takes four to six weeks to build bus runs and they did it in three days. They had their drivers physically test those routes to make sure they would work and be a safe option for students.
"Our drivers have been driving these roads for a lot of years so we trust them when they say…'this shoulder is a little soft, left turn here not a right turn,' we took that feedback on Saturday, made adjustments to runs, on Sunday confirmed to families we were gonna run school today," Smith said.
