Clarkdale students, faculty eager for new ‘home’

The torrential rain wouldn’t let up.

Within the first two and a half hours of school on Sept. 21, 2009, the quickly rising waters had already exceeded two feet.

The memory of losing 11 portable classroom trailers to a flood just five years earlier was fresh in the mind of Clarkdale Elementary School Principal Marjorie Bickerstaff.  She would not allow students and teachers to occupy the school’s 13 trailers on that stormy September day.

After watching teachers wade into the murky water barefooted to rescue their estimated $8,000 worth of personal teaching items located in the trailers, Bickerstaff stopped all access to the portable classrooms.

The small bog behind Clarkdale’s playground and outdoor learning center, approximately a mile north of Sweetwater Creek, was overflowing and quickly invading the school grounds. At around 11:30 a.m., Bickerstaff had seen enough. After watching water rapidly rise past a stick placed by a fire department official, Bickerstaff evacuated all 440 students and 65 staff members at Clarkdale.

Within minutes of school secretary Gay Callahan’s request for transportation, buses arrived to evacuated the children to nearby Garrett Middle School. In an effort to keep students calm, Bickerstaff orchestrated an orderly dismissal of the students by grade starting with kindergarten.

Slogging through ankle deep water and taking some frightened students on their backs, teachers, administrators and others emptied the school and ferried the children safely aboard buses in just 15 minutes. However, the hasty exit wasn’t without stress for students.

“When we were leaving we didn’t know that we were going to just jump on a bus,” said Olivia Danser, currently a fourth-grader at Clarkdale. “I was looking for my older sister (Madeline). When we got to Garrett and I saw my sister, we didn’t know where my parents were. Then, my dad (Russ) finally showed and we went (to our flooded) home and my sister was scared. My dad took the kayak in the back of the neighborhood and took people out.”   

By 6 p.m., the nearly 10-foot-high flood waters reached Clarkdale’s ceiling tiles. The flood would eventually destroy the 46-year-old elementary school and 87 nearby homes.

“We didn’t lose a car, didn’t lose a student, but we lost everything else,” Bickerstaff told South Cobb Patch recently. “We’re all mothers, grandmothers and fathers, and we just wanted to get the kids out. Some teachers left their purses behind.”

STUNNED BY COMMITTEE VOTE

Recovering from the Clarkdale flooding hasn’t been easy for anyone directly involved in the disaster. In the months since Clarkdale’s demise, students have adjusted to being split into two different schools, clung to pet turtles that survived the flood, established a generous spirit and eagerly wait for a new school to call their own again by June 2012. But such hopes recently appeared to be in jeopardy.

The non-binding Cobb County School District’s Facilities & Technology Committee, made up of community members appointed by Board of Education members, voted 10-3 March 15 to look again at whether to rebuild Clarkdale, or possibly redistrict the area and increase the enrollment of nearby schools to accommodate Clarkdale’s students.

The F&T vote angered many Clarkdale supporters after the board voted 6-0 in February 2010 to build a significantly larger school, appoint an architect and three months later purchase land for the new school. Carroll Daniel Construction turned in the winning low bid to rebuild the school for $14.6 million, a significant deduction from the project’s original $20 million estimated budget in January 2010.

 “These (F&T) representatives were not involved in the original decision-making process to rebuild Clarkdale and … do not fully understand the current experiences of teachers and students of Clarkdale,” said Russ Danser, president of Clarkdale’s PTA. “Unfortunately, it appears they wish to approach this decision based solely on the numbers and where the money will be coming from (SPLOST funds), rather than soliciting input from those that are impacted by their decisions.

“They did not post an agenda online the day of their meeting that stated that Clarkdale would be considered and they did not contact a member of the administration, teaching staff, or PTA to ask them for input,” Danser continued. “Yet they have now made a recommendation to consider and redistrict our students with limited knowledge of the past commitments of the Board and F&T. Over the past year, as the Board has voted to rebuild, hired an architect, purchased land and met with parents to collect input on the design, they never mentioned, ‘but this could all change because we are going to have a new Board and new F&T in a few months.’”

Danser attended all of the March 9 School Board meeting, which covered nearly a 10-hour window. He remained to hear if the board would place the approval of rebuilding Clarkdale on its agenda discussion items for a possible vote on this Thursday’s evening board meeting. Board members and others applauded Danser’s endurance prior to the discussion of the SPLOST item.

“I look forward to this taking place,” said Board Member David Morgan, whose Post 3 serves Clarkdale.

COPING WITH DISASTER

Although the displaced Clarkdale students were placed into Compton Elementary and Austell Intermediate two days after the flooding, the emotional toil of the ordeal required students and faculty to undergo crisis counseling furnished by the district.

“Counselors came in and let the students talk about what they experienced and we dealt with the healing for about a week,” said Bickerstaff, a 19-year principal with 29 years of experience in Cobb County. “We knew with brain research that emotions would hijack your brain so no learning would occur until we first met their emotional needs.”

Going through the disaster, however, has provided unexpected life lessons to Clarkdale students and staff.

“It’s taught our students, teachers, and really our community, sympathy and empathy because they had lived it,” Bickerstaff said. “Some got out with their book bags, but most didn’t. Our students immediately wanted to help others because others helped us. We had always been on the giving end, but when you’re on the receiving end it’s a whole new experience.

“Retired teachers came and gave a lot of their personal materials (to our teachers). People from all over the United States started responding to our needs,” she continued. “Teachers would donate flash drives to other teachers here. People made monetary donations and gave gift cards because we lost everything. We didn’t have a crayon. But we were blessed. It was heartwarming that so many people cared.”

At Austell Intermediate, school officials consolidated classrooms and rooms to make space for Clarkdale’s third- through fifth-grade students. The move opened 12 classrooms so grade-levels could remain in clusters together. In addition to losing their math lab, counselors at the school gave up half of their counselor suite and conference room to provide space for Clarkdale’s front office to continue to operate.

Clarkdale’s kindergarten through second-grade classes are currently housed at Compton’s back annex space, which was previously used for auxiliary classrooms for special education and counseling. To make the setting more appealing, art teacher Isabelle Hardesty drew murals on front inside walls of the annex building, which were later painted by volunteers.

“We are one school in two spots and we will remain that way until 2012 when we’re back together,” said Bickerstaff of the schools that are 5.6 miles apart. “We have staff meetings together and PTA meetings together. We have no storage. I have a POD (storage container unit) in back of this school and a POD in the back of the other school. We are visitors, but we are totally welcome.”

To help the children remember that they had survived the flood, pet turtles that were once housed at Clarkdale in a glass-enclosed area in the middle of the school were placed at both schools. Although five of the 13 turtles were lost in the flood, former State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox was moved to donate her college-age children’s two turtles to Clarkdale. All of the turtles are now prominently displayed in donated aquariums at Compton and Austell with a handwritten sign at Austell that states, “We are Survivors.”  

“When the kids saw that some of the turtles survived it was like a signal to them that they survived and we could, too,” Bickerstaff said.

TIRED OF ‘SURVIVAL MODE’

Although both Compton and Austell Intermediate have been gracious hosts, Clarkdale students and faculty are ready to have a school of their own again. The new school, planned to be adjacent to Cooper Middle School, would feature 53 classrooms instead of the 22 that the old Clarkdale previously offered. The larger school would “relieve” overcrowding at nearby elementary schools, according to the school board agenda background information.

“Our biggest struggle is we’re not in our own school,” said Clarkdale third-grade teacher Tammy McKinney, a 13-year veteran. “We want to be good guests and things are very smooth. They’ve been very good to us and kind to us, but it’s not our school. (Having a new school) is what we’ve lived for the past year. We miss the rest of the staff. We were a very close staff. We did a lot after school.”

Clarkdale kindergarten teacher Sandy Moss said the school is simply tired of being in “survival mode.”

“If you don’t see this every day and it’s not on the forefront of your mind, it’s easy to forget how we’re surviving in two different schools,” said Moss, a 16-year Clarkdale veteran. “We don’t want to be in survival mode anymore.

“Seeing the (old) building torn down meant that we’re one step closer to having closure and having our own home,” she added. “We create a school environment for our children and we’re ready to have our own building when we’re all back together.”

In anticipation of the new school being built, Bickerstaff has collected potted plants and last year started a project in which each student would have a concrete paver placed on the campus in the garden area.

“Every day we reflect,” Bickerstaff wrote in a PowerPoint presentation she gave about the flood. “We will never return to the state we were in (before the flood), but we will eventually find joy in the new ways that we had to invent.

“(Although) this experience will never be forgotten, we are stronger than ever because we have remained united,” she stated. “We will bring closure to this disaster when we are back in one school.”

A new Clarkdale has taken on an even greater significance to Russ Danser.

“There are certain images and icons of any event that changes someone’s life,” he said. “When it comes to the flood, I picture my downstairs completely flooded and the images of my daughters’ school completely underwater. When Clarkdale flooded, it became more than just the place my kids go to school – it became an icon of an event. As an icon, it also has become a symbol of hope for a community.

“Families have chosen to stay here because of the hope and promise of a new Clarkdale,” he continued. “When the school board voted in February of 2010 to rebuild, a lot of families were still making the critical decision on whether to return or leave. They didn’t choose to stay so that their kids could be redistricted to schools that are at/over capacity. When Clarkdale is completed, the iconic image of a school underwater can be redefined into an image of new birth and hope.

“This school has become much more than a building to a lot of people.”