Hundreds of Prince George’s County Public Schools students already have missed more days of classes than they have attended this school year, as two natural disasters ravaged the county in the past week and shut down schools for days at a time. Students at six Prince George’s County schools have missed four days of classes after Hurricane Irene and last week’s earthquake caused power outages and structural damage throughout the county. Nineteen schools remained closed on Tuesday.
While most county schools will reopen Wednesday, officials are expected to announce in the morning if five schools will remain closed: Glenarden Woods Elementary, Heather Hills Elementary, Rockledge Elementary, Tall Oaks Vocational High and Woodmore Elementary, according to spokesman Briant Coleman.
| Four days missed |
| Beltsville Academy |
| Bradbury Heights Elementary |
| Port Towns Elementary |
| Potomac High |
| Suitland Elementary |
| Forestville Military Academy |
The hurricane’s impact came only days after all 198 county schools were closed last Wednesday following an earthquake that rattled the Washington region and caused damage to dozens of schools.
Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a Prince George’s County resident, said his family has directly felt the effect of the odd start to the new school year, which started Aug. 22 — Brown’s daughter attends Bowie High School and has missed 2 1/2 days of school.
“It’s been a real weird start to the school year,” said Brown, who toured Pepco facilities Tuesday afternoon as officials tried to restore power to homes and businesses. “You typically don’t expect weather-related school closures until December or as late as February.”
Some schools are still stuck in the aftermath of the earthquake. Students at Bradbury Heights Elementary School in Capitol Heights have been moved indefinitely to the vacant G. Gardner Shugart Middle School in Temple Hills while repairs are made.
School officials haven’t decided when and how Bradbury will be reopened, Coleman said.
All of the county’s 127,000 students have now missed at least two days of school, with thousands more missing three or four days.
None of the schools that missed extra days because of the earthquake was also affected for more than one day by Irene, which hit Prince George’s and other counties close to the Chesapeake Bay hardest in the Washington region.
School officials were frustrated Tuesday morning when a Pepco news release announced all school systems in the Washington region had power fully restored, only to discover power was still out at Central High School when they went to reopen the building in the morning.
Coleman said the school only learned of the power returning via the news release, not from Pepco officials, who explained that though power had been restored for a short time, electricity was lost again by the time school officials arrived on the scene.
“Tree limbs are still coming down and the ground is still moist, so we’re still dealing with residual outages,” said Pepco spokesman Clay Anderson. “We weren’t notified quickly enough before Prince George’s County could make its own decision.”
