Tornadoes force some schools to close down early for summer

Donna White should have been at her job Monday in the office of a martial arts center. Instead, she was cleaning up tornado damage while tending to her two children.

The tornado that damaged her home last week also wrecked school buildings in De Soto, Mo., forcing the district to cancel classes for the rest of the year and send students home for an unexpectedly early summer. That left White with no choice but to tell her boss she was staying home, too.

"I just told them, 'I'm done for a couple of months,"' White said. "My kids are off school now, and I've got a mess to clean up at home anyway."

The early summer break is hardly cause for celebration in De Soto, one of many Missouri towns wrecked by last week's series of tornadoes and severe storms that left 42 dead in the Midwest and South.

The tornado that struck last Tuesday night left three schools in De Soto unusable, forcing the school district in the town of 6,400, located about 40 miles southwest of St. Louis, to end the school year 17 days early.

Buildings damaged

Other Missouri school districts face the same hardship. In Carl Junction, the school year is over for all students except those in high school. Two grade schools, a junior high and an intermediate school were damaged by tornadoes that struck southwest Missouri May 4. The school year had been scheduled to end May 19, according to the district's Web site.

The high school was undamaged. Students there "wanted to get through finals and graduation and prom, so they really wanted to get back," said Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokesman Jim Morris.

Classes were also excused last week in tornado-damaged Stockton and Pierce City. School officials there were still deciding if and when classes would resume.

Graduation for the De Soto high school's seniors will still go on May 31. Prom, too, will go on as planned on Saturday at a Holiday Inn in nearby Festus. But for class work, there was simply no place to go, superintendent Terry Noble said.

After the storm, state Education Commissioner D. Kent King waived the 174-day school year minimum, which De Soto was struggling to meet, anyway. Several winter storms resulted in nine snow days. Five had been made up. Still, De Soto students attended classes just 153 days this school year.

The early closing has costs beyond the loss of classroom time. About 40 percent of the district's students participate in free and reduced-price lunch program, Noble said, and about 1,000 students were expected to attend summer school, which has also been canceled.

Damage will be in the millions of dollars. Insurance and perhaps federal assistance will pay for repairs, Noble said. The district may also ask voters to approve a bond issue to upgrade the aging buildings.

Noble said the goal is to have the schools open by the time the 2003-04 year begins Aug. 21.

Kelly Gans' initial reaction to the early closing was typical of a 16-year-old. "All right, no school," she thought. That was before she saw the damage. Now, she is spending her days baby-sitting her 11-year-old sister, Heather.

"No one likes school much, but this is depressing," Gans said. "I really don't know how to handle it. You look at your school and you realize it's gone."