Temporary Schooling Arrangments

The day after the fire, school board officials and Principal Carl Langley met to come up with a plan to continue the school year for Hathaway’s 415 students. The overwhelming voice from the community was “keep the kids together.” First, the Jeff Davis School Board and Langley considered managing K-6 classes at Hathaway because firefighters were able to salvage thirteen classrooms, the cafeteria, and the agriculture building. However, fire marshals condemned the entire school grounds as unsafe. Next, they considered “platooning,” but decided against this plan because the plan involved the disruption of another school in the parish. They considered holding classes at area churches, but this plan involved splitting the kids.

The plan they finally decided on was to bus the kids to Lake Arthur where grades K-8 would use Goretti High School, which had been vacant for two years and had been damaged by a tornado. But, the elementary section was ready to go and teachers began readying their rooms as soon as the school was open for use. Grades 9-12 would use the old C.P. Adams Elementary, which had been converted into an agriculture complex several years before. The school had to be cleaned and the school’s gym had to be converted to classrooms by building plywood partitions. Students taking home economics, typing, and computer literacy would be bused to Lake Arthur High School for their classes.

On Wednesday, volunteers from the community with cattle trailers, flatbed trailers and pickups moved desks, filing cabinets, books and other salvageable items from Hathaway to Goretti in Lake Arthur. With all the help from students, parents, grandparents and others, the moving only took 6 hours. Later that evening, the community gathered at Raymond Methodist Church for an interfaith community meeting, followed by an informational session. They joined to pray and rejoice in the community’s strength. They joined to learn more about the transition to Lake Arthur. All students would begin school again on December 4, 1989.

As Assistant Principal Alby Hanks said at the time, “They just take what we have and do what they can.” Most of the teachers had nothing and had to do a lot of preparation. To many it seemed as though they had returned to their student teaching days because they had to create new lesson plans, examples and other tools to help them teach. All the students had to adjust to the trip to and from school. The high school students had to adjust to the noise level in the gymnasium because there were no ceilings or doors on the classrooms. This distance hit the basketball players the hardest. Aside from practice at different locations, players would not arrive home until 8:30 p.m. They survived with the attitude that the conditions they were enduring were only temporary.