The Dougherty County School System is prepared to handle anyone fleeing the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey, district officials say.

The district and the state of Georgia are expecting to see a number of people who had to uproot from their homes and relocate due to Hurricane Harvey. Thousands of families moved to Georgia following Hurricane Katrina in 2007. While district officials aren't sure how many people to expect, they're ready to enroll students whenever they get here. 

"We've provided our schools with special enrollment procedures for students who may be fleeing from Hurricane Harvey," DCSS Spokesperson J.D. Sumner said. "It's important that families with school-aged children get their kids enrolled wherever they may end up."

A study from Children's Health Fund outlined how families fleeing Katrina struggled to get their kids back into school as shown in this excerpt from an article in the Atlantic: 

"A 2006 study by the Children’s Health Fund and the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, part of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, warned that 20 percent of displaced children were either not enrolled in school or not attending regularly, missing an average of 10 days a month. The families interviewed for the Mailman study had moved an average of 3.5 times by six months after the storm, with some moving as many as nine times. Not surprisingly, evacuee children couldn’t keep up with their studies. Four and a half years later, Mailman researchers found that more than one-third of Katrina’s displaced children were at least one year behind in school for their age."