Janelle Irwin Taylor
Hillsborough County Public Schools will bring school-based and District staff back to work Wednesday to prepare classrooms for students. Students will resume classroom instruction on Thursday.
Public schools in Hillsborough County have been closed since last Monday in anticipation of Hurricane Milton. Initially, the District had planned to close through last Wednesday, but extended the closure through Friday after the storm hit late Wednesday into Thursday causing widespread power outages, street flooding and hazardous road conditions.
Over the weekend, the District announced it would remain closed Monday, and on Monday said it would also remain closed Tuesday.
As of Tuesday morning, the District had 35 schools still without power, but utility partners assured the District that those schools would have the lights back on within 36 hours.
The District said staff and volunteers “made tremendous progress” on Monday “cleaning up campuses from the damage from Hurricane Milton.”
The District has also extended its first quarter for the academic year to Friday, Oct. 25, to give students “adequate instructional time to complete the grading period.” The quarter had been set to end Oct. 11, when schools were closed for the storm.
With two back-to-back hurricanes that caused more than two full weeks of school closures, the District now must determine how to alter its calendar “to make up the required instructional time.” The District said it would communicate those decisions “at a later date.”
“Like our neighboring counties who were in the path of Hurricane Milton, we are grateful we can reopen schools to students, to provide some sense of normalcy for our community,” the District said in a press release.
The planned opening comes one day later than neighboring Pinellas County, where school-based and District staff returned to work Tuesday in anticipation for classes resuming Wednesday.
Elsewhere academically, the University of South Florida resumed its classes Tuesday.
