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On Jan. 25, 2023, a group of state education leaders gathered at Micaville Elementary School in Yancey County. According to Jeremy Gibbs, the deputy superintendent of the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI), they were there to study the leadership of Principal Melanie Bennett and practical strategies for restoring high performance and expectations after instruction is disrupted.

From 2015 to 2018, Micaville was a B school and met or exceeded growth annually. But post-COVID, the school had been deemed low performing by the state. Bennett became the principal in the 2022-23 school year after teaching third grade at the school for 16 years.



Bennett brought educators out of retirement to provide high-quality tutoring as an intervention. She worked with teachers to push their teaching from accomplished to distinguished. Educators worked together to address gaps in learning vertically (across grades, like K-1, 1-2, etc.) and horizontally (across all classes within a grade). Grants were obtained to support students who are socially, emotionally, behaviorally, and academically at-risk.
Micaville was originally constructed as a high school in 1936. When Hurricane Helene hit, it was serving about 198 K-5 students.
You cross a bridge over Ayles Creek to get to the school.
By my count, Bennett must have crossed that bridge more than 3,000 times over the now 18 years she has served the school without ever worrying about it flooding.
“It’s a creek,” she exclaims, when we visit her after Hurricane Helene hit. Bennett says there was between 3-6 inches of water and mud in every room in the school.
At Micaville, in the principal’s office, on the wall it says, “Every child is a story yet to be told…”
Helene will now be part of their stories.
The mountains of Yancey County

Many in North Carolina know Yancey County as the home to Mount Mitchell, the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi River (6,684′). But Yancey County is also home to Mount Craig (6,660′), Balsam Cone (6,620′), Mount Gibbes (6,540′), and Potato Hill (6,460′).
Hurricane Helene brought “three days of extreme, unrelenting precipitation” to these mountains, according to the North Carolina State Climate Office at N.C. State University, which said, “It was close to a worst-case scenario for western North Carolina as seemingly limitless tropical moisture, enhanced by interactions with the high terrain, yielded some of the highest rainfall totals — followed by some of the highest river levels, and the most severe flooding — ever observed across the region.”

Here you can learn more about how weather patterns converged to create “a setup for relentless rain.”

While rain totals are still being validated, preliminary three-day totals for Yancey County include 31.33 inches at Busick, 24.41 inches at Mount Mitchell, and 19.98 inches at Celo.
For context, according to the North Carolina State Climate Office, the 24.41 inches over three days at Mount Mitchell is “off the charts” compared to the 1-in-1,000 year amount of 16.5 inches.
The heavy rain, according to the state climate office, sent “rivers near or above their major flood stages, and that rising water overwhelmed communities across the region.”
It did the same with creeks, too, including Ayles Creek in Micaville.
The stormwater washed out roads and byways, led to mudslides, compromised water and sewer infrastructure, and flooded the homes, schools, and businesses that define our communities. According to Superintendent Kathy Amos, 197 homes in the county were destroyed and another 777 need major repairs.
Wind intensified the impact of the hurricane. At Mount Mitchell, the state climate office reports “a gust of 106 mph at 8:27 am on Friday –- the strongest wind observed there since April 2011.”
Tree after tree fell, compromising the electrical and communications infrastructure that undergirds daily life.
As people try to put their lives back together, schools and community colleges, towns and counties throughout the hurricane-impacted region are having to figure out how to address unprecedented damage to infrastructure, including streets, electricity, cellular service, internet, water, and sewer.
Given the challenges facing Yancey, Mitchell, and Avery counties in bringing students back to the classroom and serving them in the months ahead with the winter weather that is on its way, EdNC will be focusing our ongoing reporting and strategic support after the storm in this three-county corridor.

In the aftermath of the hurricane
What’s happening at Micaville
The day DPI’s Jeremy Gibbs and Stephanie Dischiavi visited Micaville after the hurricane, the school sign said, “We love our Micaville community. Stay strong.”
And while the waters of the creek had receded, and Servpro was there starting the cleanup process, it was heartbreaking and overwhelming to come face to face with the damage to this beloved school.
This school is a family. When you enter the school, a sign says, “In this school… We do second chances. We apologize. We forgive. We respect each other. We keep our promises. We never give up. We encourage one another. We laugh often. We belong… We are a family.”
This is the classroom where Bennett taught all those years.

In the reflection of the water that was still standing in the classroom, you could see the post-it notes of students on a poster board titled, “Our class is a family.” One says, “help people git up.” Another says, “look after people.”

And that is what they have been doing in the days following the storm. While we were there, the chief from the local fire department stopped by to check in with Bennett. Just the week before, the two of them had conducted “side by sides,” where they went together to check on students and educators who were missing.


“Please know that we will not be returning to our building due to the significance of the flooding and damage caused to the interior of the building,” Bennett said in a presentation on the damage to the school.
What’s happening in the Yancey County Schools
The public schools in Yancey County and beyond serve as the staging grounds for rescue, relief, and recovery in many communities when there is a disaster. Often they have the parking lots with the most asphalt, they are built to serve as shelters, and they are equipped with commercial kitchens.
In Yancey County, rescue and relief workers were being housed at Burnsville Elementary, referred to locally these days as “tent city.”
At Mountain Heritage High School, there were police, fire, and national guard units from Matthews, NC to Philadelphia, PA.
Blue Ridge Elementary housed a Red Cross shelter and a medical clinic operated by the local health department.
Cane River Middle School served as a point of distribution of supplies.



The schools have been in use 24/7, which has required school leaders and educators to be on site 24/7. Students have worked to organize and distribute supplies. Even the school attorney has worked every day except one when he had to evacuate his own mom.
“I am proud of the role our public schools have played in serving our community,” said Superintendent Kathy Amos. “Our teachers, our cafeteria staff, our bus drivers, our students. We are all just working to rebuild our community.”



“We’re making it. It’s what we do,” Amos said. “It’s what we do.”
Stronger together in the moving forward
Given the unprecedented challenges to the county’s infrastructure, a date has not been set to reopen schools in Yancey County.
At the six schools other than Micaville, the district is working to restore consistent electricity, water, and sewer. “I encourage everyone to keep holding on as progress is made each week on our infrastructure,” Amos said in a weekly update.
The schools are in the process of moving the shelter and donation sites to allow for the cleaning of the facilities required to reopen.
The damage to Micaville is different both compared to other schools in the district and compared to the other schools in the region that are displaced because of the hurricane. Old Fort Elementary in McDowell County is a state-of-the-art, relatively new school. A new building is under construction and will be completed in 2025 for Valle Crucis Elementary in Watauga County.
Amos, Bennett, and the community are working together on a way forward for Micaville, but there isn’t an easy answer for this 88-year-old school that has touched so many lives.
Bennett and her team had pulled Micaville out of low-performing status. A colleague told Bennett, “You have to focus on all of the good, all of the good things that were done over the years in the school.” That has helped Bennett see beyond the destruction.
“I just wanted us to finish strong in this building,” she said. Thanks to her leadership and the family of Micaville Elementary — the team of educators, the students, and parents — she did, said both Gibbs and Amos.
“We did finish strong,” Bennett realizes, and that helps her believe that in the moving forward, “we’re going to be strong again, and we will be stronger together.”
That is the lesson learned from this school in all of its iterations over time.
You matter, Micaville
When we visited at the start of 2023, there was a sign in one of the classroom spaces being used for interventions after the pandemic. It said, “You matter.”

To all of the students, educators, parents, and leaders of Micaville and the Yancey County Schools family, you matter.
Stay strong. Stay stronger together.
If you would like information on how to support Micaville Elementary and Yancey County Schools, please email me at mrash at ednc.org.