I chose to write my research paper on the ongoing flooding situation in Harwood, North Dakota. As I live in West Fargo, I was untouched by the flooding because of the safety provided by the Sheyenne Diversion. However, I work for West Fargo Schools, of which Harwood is a part.
Over the last month, we have moved the students of Harwood Elementary School into the city of West Fargo twice. With all the rural road closings, our staff, students, and our buses were unable to get to the school. In the interest of continuing their education, we found alternate spaces for them at the Community Center and one of our other elementary schools, Westside.
All of the Harwood and Reiles Acres families were true champions when it came to moving the students back and forth. There were only three families that actually withdrew their children from the West Fargo school system and enrolled them where flooding was not an issue.
Beyond the school closing, the city was affected by numerous other things caused by flooding. Harwood is a very rural area, and as such, does not have lift station capacity to handle all the water that is up there. Harwood residents have been living with water restrictions for some time now.
Some residents have been completely cut off from the rest of the city. The only way to and from their home is by boat or chest-high waders. There was a picture on the front page of the Forum a few weeks back of one of our staff members wading through deep water with a laundry basket in her arms. She was on her way to work and then to a friend’s house to wash her family’s clothing.
One of the biggest challenges the small town of Harwood has faced through this whole ordeal is basically a debate on who claims them. Harwood is a city in its own right, and has a mayor and a city council. However, the city of Fargo did a lot of their flood preparations and the city of West Fargo dealt with their students. Harwood was pulled between the two larger cities, and sometimes got lost in the shuffle when it came to media attention.
I believe I will have my work cut out for me in researching the flood at Harwood, as coverage of that area was often rolled into the larger coverage of the metro area. Interviews with the mayor and the citizens of Harwood will probably be the best way for me to get the answers I seek.
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I am not familiar with the Harwood area. I can relate with having the children move to different schools. My best friend lives with me in Valley. His faience lives with her aunt and uncle just on the east side of town. I spend much of my time with him, who is spending time with her, who is at her aunt and uncles, so I have had the pleasure to meet her family and how their youngest was going to elementary school here in Valley and ended up moving to Binford for a few weeks to go to school with her cousin, who is the same age. This is such a weird situation but it would have been hard to go to school, then to another school, only to return back to school and not knowing where all the students stand as to the learning.
ReplyDeleteI, too, am going to have my work cut out for me in gathering information on this flood and who was in charge of information dissemination. If I had chosen Fargo, that would probably be an easy thing since the Mayor seemed to be the primary spokesperson. He was the one I always heard on the news and doing interviews, and he was the one on the online radio broadcast (?) that I listened to for updates. I don't recall, at least not so far into my research, a single entity or person being the primary spokesperson for my community.
ReplyDeleteYour post was very interesting to me as I have been to Harwood, but never really paid attention to where the river ran. I to understand about the children going to other schools. I do a lot of nannying in the VC area and a lot of the kids i babysit did start school at another school while they were displaced for their own schools in Valley City. In a way I think this would be good for kids. One they are learning how to meet new people and another we are contuining their education. Spending 2 whole weeks out of school does have an impact on children. It is just like a shortened summer break. The families that I know that did not send their children to another school did spend time working with their children on things that would have been done in school. Things like math, reading, and writing.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be fairly difficult for the kids to have to be moved from one school to another. There is no way that they could have moved all of those kids without some great communication. They had to first decide within the school what they were going to do with the kids, then they had to contact other schools for where they could place the kids, and finally they had to let the parents of the kids know where their kids were going to be going for their education for the duration of the flood. Very impressive.
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