by Kate Denning, Carolina Public Press
July 16, 2025

When Tammy Finch entered the Orange County charter school she co-founded to assess the damage from Tropical Depression Chantal, instead of seeing children in the halls, she saw a fish.

The Expedition School was hit hard by Chantal earlier this month due to its location inside the Eno River Mill, a historic, multi-use building situated on the Eno River in Hillsborough. Finch is the co-founder and Director of Education and Curriculum at the charter school. 

Up to 6 feet of floodwater filled some of the classrooms. Finch was extremely surprised by how much water had come in, which she said no one anticipated. 

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“There was so much water, and it was very quick moving water, that just took all the stuff in the school and shoved it over to one side,” Finch said. “Then, when it receded, it pulled it all back to the other side.”

The full extent of what’s been lost is yet to be seen, Finch said, though the charter school lost all of the desks and chairs for its 381 students and an estimated 98% of curriculum materials. More than the supplies, Finch is struggling with the loss of irreplaceable items, like years worth of signed yearbooks from her past students. 

Given the extent of the flooding, the jury is out on when TES will be able to return to its original space in the mill. Until then, there are other areas of the building untouched by the flooding that the charter school is able to move into temporarily. 

A new tenant was set to move into an area of the mill that was previously used as an event site, but they pulled out in order to allow TES to use the space instead. The mill’s property management company, Hedgehog Holdings, is also allowing the school to access additional space in the building temporarily.

TES is a year-round school, meaning students were supposed to return for classes July 31. The charter school pushed the start date back to Aug. 24 to allow time to acquire new materials and settle into the new space. 

Just days before the storm, TES hosted a summer camp for students that ended July 3, leaving a few weeks of breathing room before students were to return for the new school year. So while the flooding is far from ideal circumstances, it occurred in a down period for the charter school, which Finch said was a small respite.

“We’re extremely grateful that no one lost a life, no one was hurt, and that this happened at an interesting time of year where we have a little time to reset,” she said. “If this had happened on a Sunday and the kids were due to come to school the following Monday, we’d really be scrambling. But we have this time, a little gift of time, and we have an extremely supportive community that’s coming out to help us out.”

Should students have been in the building when flooding began, the charter school has evacuation plans in place. The flooding occurred in about one third of the school’s space, whereas the remainder of the classrooms are on higher ground, where students likely would have gone if necessary.

But this level of flooding was far from anything Finch has seen in the charter school’s 11 years in the mill. She has seen water pour into Gold Park, next to the school, which is in a flood zone. The water in the Eno River hasn’t reached levels as high as it did during Chantal since Hurricane Fran in 1996.

Despite historic damage, TES never had to consider closing its doors. The charter school has carefully contributed to its emergency fund over the years, which is now coming in handy, and the outpouring of support from the community has made all the difference, Finch said.

In the first hours after the storm, the TES community and beyond took action. The school has published daily updates on its Facebook page, issuing calls to action and updates on progress. Current and past families, retired staff and various community members have shown up to clean up debris and assess salvageable items.

The charter school has a motto: “We are crew, not passengers.” Finch said this mindset is evident through the widespread support they’ve received, and she feels optimistic about the path forward.

“It’s not going to get us down and ruin us,” she said. “Through this challenge, we’re still going to rise.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Charter school forced to relocate temporarily after Chantal flooding appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This content is a straightforward news report focusing on the impact of flooding from Tropical Depression Chantal on a local charter school. It presents factual information without inserting opinion or partisan commentary, and it highlights community support and recovery efforts. The neutral tone and absence of ideological framing suggest a centrist bias aimed at informing rather than persuading readers toward a specific political viewpoint.