AUGUSTA, Ga () – The school had crews working for three weeks to clear trees, so they were able to have usable spaces.

The school is Pre-K through 8th grade with their main campus on Walton Way and the Nature School on Flowing Wells Rd.

The head of school, David Perkinson, at EDS says downed trees took a long time to get cleaned up, “We got hit very hard on both campuses with loss of trees, out here we have 50 acres. We lost a lot of big trees, we lost more trees than anything else, not a lot of damage to structures.”

The storm caused major damage at the nature school, students were not allowed to go back into the woods or their learning center until weeks later.

Perkinson says, “With those kids spending so much time outside, their classroom spaces are outside. We have the holly classroom, the magnolia classroom, we have the creek classroom, they are all over those woods all the time, so the inability to access different parts of the woods was really difficult for us.” 

The student’s outdoor classroom called ‘yurts’ was not accessible but now is completely cleared of debris.

Perkinson says they are devastated over the loss of thousands of trees, but the kids took advantage of their new classroom.

“The kids are like ‘great we have new things to climb on, we’ve got new places we can explore, and it looks different’ it was like a totally new experience. All that resilience that they developed by being out here and being outside and braving the elements, and the creativity that comes with creating every bit of play that you’re going to operate and you’re going to do, you know there are no plastic toys in the woods.” he says.

He gets emotional thinking back to the effort parents and the community put in to help the students get back to school.

He says, “It’s just such a great expression of the love that we have for one another and the care that we try to take and the community that we try to build. Parents have been phenomenal all the way through and very patient and understanding.” 

The school does still have work to be done but is back to normal operations.