Hurricane Michael: Promoting Recovery in
Bay District Schools

The following is a text alternative description for the Hurricane Michael: Promoting Recovery in Bay District Schools.

[The video begins with the logos of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness Response (ASPR) along with the title of the video "Hurricane Michael: Promoting Recovery in Bay District Schools" shown on a non-descript background.  The video continues with remarks by Denise Kelley, Assistant Superintendent, Bay District Schools - Panama City, Florida; Dr. C.J. Huff, Former Superintendent, Joplin Tornado - Missouri; Scott Dugas, Field Coordinator - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Darin Headrick, Former Superintendent, Greensburg Tornado - Kansas; and King Davis, Superintendent, Hurricane Harvey - Texas.  The video continuously features images of the damaged schools, surrounding areas, students, teachers, the Peer to Peer Mentors meeting with the district administrators and school-based administrators at various locations as well as footage from areas effected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas.]

Denise Kelley: Hurricane Michael hit our district on October 10, 2018. In that short of time span, we lost a lot of students, like, 5,000 students left our area. We lost over 250 teachers that decided they needed to leave because there were no places to live or they could find a job in another area. Our homeless rate has increased to about 5400 students, and that includes some of our own district personnel are homeless now. We've had to lay teachers off because of funding issues. Our mental health, we did a mental health survey. We had clinical levels of anxiety, depression, and PTSD, so the mental health is very important to us in knowing that we can support our people. Today, we have the awesome opportunity to host a group of mentors from around the country. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Recovery Division, has brought in mentors to speak to our district administrators in one location and our school-based administrators in another location.

Dr. C.J. Huff: Why is it we're all now a part of an exclusive club that nobody wants to be a part of? We've been through something very traumatic.

Scott Dugas: But what these mentors from across the country have in common is they've gone through a disaster and although different scenarios and different types of disaster, there's a commonality there and that's their strength.

Darin Headrick: It's not necessarily the worse night of your life. Even with all the bad things that happened just so many blessings that pop up in different places.

Denise Kelley: People have survived these things in the past. That gives us glimpses of hope as well.

King Davis: I mean Harvey certainly devastated our community, but in the end, we were resilient and came out better for it.

Denise Kelley: We do have the opportunity to rewrite our story. We have the opportunity to make things better. So thankful to have the opportunity to speak to these leaders, these superintendents, these principals from across the country to find out the steps that they took because we haven't walked in those shoes yet and we're walking them trying to make the best decisions that we can.

[The video concludes with an image of the a sign that displays the address "Bay District Schools Administrative Officess 1311" followed by a non-descript background with the Department of Health and Human Services logo, caption and voice-over narrative, “Produced at U.S. taxpayer expense by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”]