Education Policy, Business and Technology

Amid Brutal Storm, Educators Gave Shelter, Hands-On Care

Education Week: By 1 p.m. Monday, as Hurricane Irma’s ferocity weakened and the storm continued its northward march, just 50 people were left at the shelter inside Boca Raton High School.

It was a dramatic change from just a day earlier, when 1,700 evacuees had sought shelter at the high school in the Palm Beach County school district, about 50 miles north of Miami.

One of the holdouts was Susie King, the principal, who’d been hunkered down at the school since dawn Friday. With 32 volunteers working in the shelter—many of them school employees working around the clock to feed evacuees, keep the shelter clean, and provide other supports—King had pivoted to deploying her skills as a decisionmaker, problem-solver, and comforter, which she usually devotes to the school’s 3,500 students and their teachers.

Read article