Woodford County was hit especially hard by the windstorm.

Thousands of households in the county lost power for days.

So Woodford County Public Schools stepped up to provide the community a warm building and a hot meal.

Which are county got hit really hard with the 2023 windstorm.

We seem to take the brunt of the impact.

We had sustained winds that were over 70 miles an hour and winds in the 50 and 60 mile an hour for several hours.

So that really impacted our community and impacted travel.

It brought trees down on roads, It brought power lines down and it knocked out power for over 60% of Woodford County.

We have we've actually seen damage to our schools.

We had a set of bleachers flipped over, went completely through our middle school softball back backstop, and it's destroyed that fence.

We have three roofs that are probably going to have to be replaced on schools right now.

So we've seen extensive damage here move for County on Tuesday.

We still had almost 7000 folks without power as we were working through assessing storm damage through the weekend, just trying to see what our community would need.

It kind of crossed my mind that we may be able to offer some meals or some snacks if nothing else.

I reached out to Timmis Choir, who is our food service director, and I said, What do you think about serving some meals?

I said, Well, and not just for students will serve up, too.

To their families, to the community.

Because, you know, everybody's been without power now three or four days now.

Very, very few hot meals.

Let's try to help the community.

And that's all I had to say.

Ms.. Choir was great.

She reached out to her staff.

They were great.

I think they had a really good meal of spaghetti with a salad, garlic bread, just a great meal.

515 folks took advantage.

That tells you there was a need in our community for this type of service.

I really give the schools a lot of credit.

They stepped up.

They said we can serve the community.

We can provide these meals at each school.

So it was a really big blessing for our community to have that sort of support because a lot of folks hadn't had a hot meal or didn't have the ability to cook a hot meal at home.

It was just it was a great team effort for, what, four county public schools.

So we appreciate our community and we hope that we've been able to show that a little bit.

Always look for the helpers.

Clean up and repair efforts in Woodford County are ongoing.