Western NC students, educators confronting widespread learning loss post-Helene

BURNSVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- Four months after Hurricane Helene tore its path through the mountains, we're getting a better sense of the damage the catastrophic storm has inflicted on public education in western North Carolina. Between the storm recovery and a bitter winter with several rounds of snow and ice, students have already missed weeks of in-person instruction.

"This will be the first full, seven-hour, five-day-a-week week -- since before the hurricane," said Daron Williams, principal of Mountain Heritage High School in Burnsville, the Yancey County seat.

For educators like Williams, there's no blueprint for how to shepherd a school and its students through a catastrophe like Helene, or the learning loss and educational disruptions that accompanied it.

RELATED STORY | Mountain communities find creative ways to keep students engaged after Helene

Allyson Heidenfelder is a Yancey County mom, but for dozens of local students and their parents, she's become a lot more than that.

"We had students who lost family members. We had students who lost houses. We had teachers who lost everything in their house. We had one middle-school student who didn't make it," he said.

Williams is a longtime educator, and also a father of schoolchildren and a western North Carolina native who saw his high school transformed into a de facto emergency operations center after the storm.

"Teachers at heart just want to help. And so our teachers were just driving and going to check on kids, driving here, driving there, making lists, taking supplies," he said.

By the numbers, the damage Helene inflicted on western North Carolina's educational infrastructure -- both in time lost and in physical property -- is staggering. According to a preliminary state report, the storm caused $573 million in direct physical damage to school facilities, grounds and property -- and more than $860 million in damage overall. In Yancey County, students missed 34 in-person learning days after Helene, and have missed another 15 days since returning to school because of winter weather. In a rural community that lost virtually all connectivity to the outside world after the storm, the effect on students has been enormous.

SEE ALSO | Family finally regains power after 3+ months following Hurricane Helene

"It was hard balancing school and then the year and then the hurricane and then we suffered snow and then you got to balance your grades. And then it was just it was a lot at once," said Croix Silver, a senior at Mountain Heritage.

Students have tried their best to stay on top of school work, but say it's been an eye-opening year.

"Once everything kind of got back to a little bit of normalcy, it really helped with that. And it really opened you up to what's important in your life, you know," Silver said.

But that time lost still has parents concerned about the long-term implications for their students, especially those who already lived and learned through COVID.

SEE ALSO | Asheville businesses struggle to rebuild after Hurricane Helene

"Some people say it's the same like COVID," said Maria Yumagulova, a mother of two students in Yancey County. "But I'm like, no because the whole world is moving in and you are stuck here and your kids are not going to school. Don't educate anymore. Don't communicate anymore," she said.

For Yumagulova's eldest daughter, a high school sophomore with college aspirations, the future is bright -- but 50 days out of the classroom this year have created new questions.

"They're missing school, and they said, 'Oh, everybody going to pass'. But I said, this is not a question if they pass or not, the question is the knowledge they're going to have or not," she said.

In the halls and classrooms of Mountain Heritage High School, a school that -- at last -- is once again a school, that's a challenge that educators like Williams aren't taking on alone.

"We're going to catch up. We're going to learn what we need to learn. But people just -- they just really work hard to help each other," he said.