About 60 percent of Louisiana’s school districts will remain closed due to the after effects of Hurricane Gustav, the Associated Press reported Wed.School districts are closing in part due to continued power outages throughout various cities in Louisiana. Cities such as Lafayette, New Orleans and Baton Rouge continue to experience outages days after Gustav swept through the area.
Other districts, such as Ouachita Parish, will remain closed until Monday due to widespread flooding, affecting deliveries and transportation.
While some school districts will remain closed for the rest of the week, others will reopen. Lincoln Parish schools reopened today after Gustav delivered its blow to the area. Grambling Laboratory schools will also resume operation today.
All of the University of Louisiana Systems universities will resume operation with the exception of Nicholls State and Southeastern Louisiana University. The targeted opening date for these schools is slated for Monday.
On Monday, GSU sent out a First Call alert informing students that classes were canceled until Thursday. The notification angered some students who felt it came a little late.
“Out of all the stuff Grambling has done, this is by far the dumbest thing ever,” said Courtney Henderson via Facebook. “It took entirely too freaking long for that decision to be made by university officials.”
According to www.gram.edu, university officials were monitoring Gustav’s progress as it became apparent that the hurricane would strike the state.
While First Call took until Monday to be sent out, the university updated its Web site with the news of classes being canceled after 7 p.m. on Sunday.
This is not the first criticsm for what is called “late” notices. In April, the university was shut down after to an alleged shooting that occurred on-campus.
After the shooting, it took some students several hours to a day to receive First Call notifications about the shooting and campus being locked down.
The university did say that they were working with First Call to rectify the problem then.
There is no word on what caused the delay in informing students via First Call. Other ULS universities announced their closures on Sunday before 5 p.m.