EUREKA, Mo. — The Rockwood School District is asking some parents to pick up students at the end of the day because a handful of busses cannot get the children safely home.
A Eureka mother is questioning the school district's choice to send students to school as floodwaters from this week's heavy rainfall continued to rise.
Mary LaPak, the chief communications officer for the Rockwood School District, said seven buses are impacted by dismissal at three different schools: Robert T. Geggie Elementary School, LaSalle Springs Middle and Eureka High School. Buses can't maneuver around Highway FF, so parents of children impacted have been notified that they will have to pick up their kids from school Thursday at regular dismissal time.
Christine Sussler, whose children attend two of those schools, said she doesn't believe the district made the right choice. She said she picked up her children early this morning because she anticipated this happening, claiming if she had waited to do so until school notified her, it would have been too late for her to get to them.
"Pacific canceled school and Eureka is the next city over and Eureka is also in a flood zone. And for some reason, they decided not to cancel school. Even though when we passed the high school at about 8:30 this morning, the soccer fields already underwater and it hasn't even crested yet. The river isn't expected to crest until midnight tonight. So the buses came this morning," Sussler said.
As for Eureka High School and the flooded fields, athletic fields to the south are under water. The water has started to recede a bit, so that's encouraging, LaPak said.
But Sussler said she received an email saying that the busses cannot get children home.
"So to me that says either they don't feel the children in our area are important enough to cancel school for and everybody else's bus routes are gonna run as normal," Sussler added.
Sussler said her home is in an area that turns into an island when there is heavy rainfall, so it would have made it hard for her to get to her children if she waited until the end of the school day.
"The Meramec gets flooded through Pacific so I can't go that way and then the Bar Creek gets flooded, heading toward Eureka. So I become my own little island along with everybody else in this community. ... No one is going to physically be able to take their kid to school unless it's by boat," Sussler shared.
In the district's email to parents, the school apologized for the inconvenience but said school was not canceled school on Friday.
Director of Transportation for the Rockwood School District Mike Heyman said that there is only a portion of the bus routes impacted by the floodwaters.
"A lot of parents are trusting the school's decision," Sussler said. "So since the school decided to be in session, parents probably thought it was safe to send their kids to school. That's the whole point.
"They were trusting the school district to make the right call and I don't believe they made the right call here and now there's potential kids that aren't gonna be able to make it home. They're not supposed to be home until between 3 to 4 p.m. and the water is just going to continue to rise. And then for them still not to even have school called tomorrow when the water is at its highest, It's insane to me."
LaPak said the district planned to hold classes as usual across the district Friday, as well as scheduled activities taking place Thursday and Friday night.
