Rural schools set to return to campus after dealing with water safety issues

Snow and ice still layer many roads in Texarkana and the surrounding areas, and the melting snow is expected to freeze again overnight. The road shown is Corporate Drive in Texarkana, Texas.
Snow and ice still layer many roads in Texarkana and the surrounding areas, and the melting snow is expected to freeze again overnight. The road shown is Corporate Drive in Texarkana, Texas.

School districts around the Atlanta, Texas, area have had to extend student holidays into this week because of water safety issues stemming from the winter storms of last week. But those schools in areas under a boil advisory should be set to open campuses back up to students Wednesday.

Sidney Harrist, superintendent of Atlanta Independent School District, said his district had to keep students home until Tuesday so they could prepare to open up under a boil order on Wednesday, with enough bottled water for students and faculty.

"We took (Tuesday) to get things in order, to where we've got enough bottles of water that we can use and give each student a bottle," Harrist said. "We'll make sure that the lunches are something the cafeteria can make that we don't need water for. We're close enough to getting everything where we can operate, so we're starting back (Wednesday)."

Malta, Simms and Hooks ISD's also are planning to return Wednesday, according to their social media posts.

The City has been under a boil advisory since Friday, but Atlanta City Manager David Cockrell said the water system is now up.

"We're providing water to our customers now, but since we ran out, we were required to issue a boil advisory," Cockrell said. So, the school district just needed to know if they had to operate under a boil advisory, and how would they do that."

The water issues were yet another hoop these districts had to jump through, after roads were also in poor conditions on Monday.

"Monday, the roads were bad, but they're fine now," Harrist said. "I've traveled through all our back roads, and they're good to go."

"The water pressure is still not good. They have to cut it down at night. But we should have plenty of water in the day to help take care of us, we just can't drink it or use it."

Harrist said the decision to keep campuses closed until today was ultimately a "better safe than sorry" approach.

"I just didn't want to chance anything with that," he said. "So, it's just been one of those things. To me, I'd rather keep the kids home safe rather than allow something to happen. But we're good to go now."

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