(Mobile, Ala.) - While they're talking, at Clark Shaw Magnet School, they are already doing.
And what they are doing is turning one campus into two. Florence Mitchell usually spends these hours maintaining the classrooms at Clark Shaw Magnet School.But this week, she's spending her time rearranging them.
"We're just switching teachers from one room to another one," she said, "making room for some of Murphy's teachers."
And all around her are the sounds of a campus in transition.
Next week, the middle school students will share their campus with Murphy High students.
Now Clark Shaw teachers, like Kathleen Piguet, say now is the time for all good teachers to come to the aid of their profession.
"We're more than willing to have them here," she said. "It could have been any of our schools that this happened to. So we could be in those shoes, you know?"
One point that is being made, very clearly, is that this is not a merging of the two schools.
And a newly constructed fence represents that.
On one side you have Murphy's campus, and on another side you have Clark Shaw Magnet School.
Clark Shaw principal Dianne McWain said a parental concern has been that separation.
Separated they shall be, and they're doing more than just rearranging desks.
"Murphy will take in at 8:30 and will be dismissed at 3:30," explained the principal. "Our children come in at 7:20 and will be dismissed at 2:30, and so all of our teachers are still together and all of our students are still together."
No, this is not a perfect arrangement for anybody, but it will work, she said.
And that is the nature of disasters.
They care nothing about the concerns nor convenience of those they affect.
But, in spite of all this devastation, this disaster didn't do its worst.
It arrived on a day when this campus... was empty.
"This is an inconvenience, not a tragedy," said McWain. "There's a huge difference."
