GISD Info

I received the following email today,

"Dear GISD Employees,

We want you to know that we are working diligently to restore our schools for your return. Each and every day we are meeting to receive the latest updates from Arnold Proctor and Fred Niccum about the conditions of our facilities. Additionally, we are attending all of the meetings with city and county officials, as well as, many other key people that are working around the clock to restore the infrastructure and city services to our Galveston community.


Report on the Conditions of Our Facilities/Campuses
The five campuses most adversely affected by Hurricane Ike were Ball High, Central, Scott, Burnet and San Jacinto, mostly due to flood and water damage. We continue to inspect our facilities daily and the reports seem to change as quickly as I can report/update the conditions. At the present time, the District has retained outside contractors that have access to heavy equipment and generators to come in and begin work on our most severely damaged buildings first. The majority of our campuses will be repaired and cleaned within the next 3 days; however, Ball, Central, Scott, San Jacinto, and Burnet will need some additional repair time. As soon as we are able, the HVAC systems will be checked for viability of operation. The number one goal of the entire clean up/restoration process is to dehumidify all of our buildings and keep them dry. GISD wants our facilities/campuses to be ready to go when the power and water come on line, whenever that might be. The GISD Transportation Center experienced high water levels on the west end of the island and plans are underway to evaluate the entire fleet. Seven of our school buses are continuing to assist the city of Galveston. Additionally, the Sheriff’s Department/Fire Emergency Response Services and the Department of Public Safety are using the Crenshaw campus on the Bolivar Peninsula as an Emergency Command Post. The Galveston Independent School District continues to partner with the city and county to lend a hand whenever we are asked to assist during this disaster aftermath recovery phase.

The following conditions need to be up and running before the District will be able to consider opening our schools:

· Safety -- Our facilities must have fully functioning (electricity, water supply, sewer, natural gas)

· Transportation

· Food Supplies

· Support Services (technology)

· Return of our Staff Members – - We are attempting to poll our staff members to see how many will be able to return to work between September 29th and October 3rd.

Please e-mail dyann_polzin@gisd.org to report your individual status!

Please state:
Your name
Assigned Campus
Grade Level/subject you teach
Job Assignment (non-teaching staff)

Presently, we will continue to work on the restoration and dehumidifying of our facilities. We are meeting daily to come up with the best plan possible for our children to return to GISD. We must consider safety first and we are continuing to partner with the City of Galveston as they work to bring our island back. We would like to aim for the target date of October 6th as our starting date to reopen the District; however, let me be very clear this is a TARGET DATE ONLY. Certainly this date is contingent on the city of Galveston being able to have the entire infrastructure functioning and working properly.

Communications Update
Currently, we have large generators set up at the District Support Center and our data systems and servers are functioning and we now have our GISD e-mail https://12.228.125.109/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.gisd.org/remote or https://12.228.125.109/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.gisd.org/mail system in place.

Additionally, the district Website is fully functional. Please go to https://12.228.125.109/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.gisd.org to read the most current updates available, as we proceed with our plans to reopen our schools.

Also, the phone system at the District Support Center (409) 766-5100 is working and we plan to update the recorded message on a regular basis (English and Spanish). Please feel free to call in for the most up-to-date information. We want to keep you informed and we will share as much information as we possibly can…

If you have not been able to return to the Island since Hurricane Ike and you plan to come back to the Island on Wednesday, September, 24th we plan to have staff members present at the re-entry point to distribute a GISD informational flyer along with other information that will be distributed by the City of Galveston.

I hope to see all of our GISD family soon!"