It's been one week after a powerful EF-3 tornado tore through Jacksboro, severely damaging two of the city’s three schools.
But students are finding a new normal elsewhere in town.
On Tuesday morning, the school district welcomed back Jacksboro Elementary School and Jacksboro High School students with open arms.
“We love what we do and we love these kids and we’re so happy to be here,” said elementary teacher Becky Fudge.
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Fudge greeted little ones as they streamed through the doors at First Baptist Church in Jacksboro, their temporary campus while repairs are made to Jacksboro Elementary.
“That was all I hoped for this morning, I was so happy to see them again and I’m so grateful,” she said. “We’re all OK and we have a place to teach. It’s not the same but they’re already exploring the room and they’re so excited. People have been so generous and wonderful to us.”
Reuniting through hugs and tears, Fudge said this is the first time they’ve seen each other since the storm turned her life and the lives of her students upside down.
“We have already started talking. They wanted to know how my house was – and I said it’s broken. We talked about our school but it’s a little bit broken too,” she said. “But it’s going to be fixed.”
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Stacy Williams, a mom of three who has a child at all three schools in Jacksboro, said she was in the parent pick-up line at Jacksboro Elementary when the tornado roared through right after school last Monday.
She credits principal Michael Qualls for helping usher parents and children into the building for safety as the tornado hit.
“I had just parked my car and the sirens started going off,” she recalls. “I looked up and saw Mr. Qualls rushing parents in the building. As soon as we got in the building, we literally saw the gym come down.”
While several cars, including Williams', were wrecked or damaged, no one was seriously hurt or killed.
“Today is our first day seeing him, so it’s kind of emotional. If he hadn’t had rushed us in there, who knows what would’ve happened,” she said.
Williams said now, knowing her children can go back to school to some sort of normalcy is what they need to start healing.
"The kids need to be in school, that's where they want to be. They want to be with their friends, they want to be with their teachers,” Williams said. "The school is the people who you're with. It's not really the building that you're in. It's who you're with, that's what matters."
Fourth and fifth-grade students at the elementary school have also been moved to Jacksboro Middle School and other buildings in town that were mostly untouched by the storms.
“This is not what we’re normally used to but our teachers and administrators have just risen to the challenge,” said Brad Burnett, Jacksboro ISD superintendent. “We moved a lot of materials from the elementary school over to the churches and other locations.”
Teachers were given the day on Monday to prepare for classes in a new location.
“We met with them for a couple of hours and just gave them the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings, some tears and some laughter,” said Burnett. “I think that got them ready to embrace today and embrace the challenges.”
He said their goal moving forward is to identify which families need help with supplies and other monetary needs and connect with them. Counselors and other mental health support is also being offered and provided to all students in the district.
“A lot of those littles were in that building when that tornado hit, so it was a very traumatic experience for those kids,” he said. “Our focus this week is going to be on the social-emotional health of our students. We want them to see their friends and reconnect with their friends and just find out what their needs are.”
Jacksboro High School students also headed back to class for the first time on Tuesday. The school’s gym was destroyed but the district said that engineers have determined the rest of the campus is safe for normal operations.
Superintendent Burnett said repairs at both schools will take some time.
He said he expects the pre-K through third graders to come back to their campus in two weeks once repairs are completed in their section of the school.
However, the fourth and fifth-grade wing was more severely damaged, so those students might finish off the semester in their temporary locations while clean up and repairs are made.
