There has been confusion over when Buncombe County Schools and Asheville City Schools will reopen in the aftermath of Helene.

In an ACS board meeting on Monday night, leaders said that city, county and charter schools will all resume at the same time.

On Tuesday, a BCS spokesperson told News 13 that was not the case.

Ken Ulmer with BCS said that they have been working to safely reopen schools as quickly as they can. But with 45 schools, there are many challenges.

We’ve got more than 15,000 miles of roads that our buses take every day. All those roads are being reassessed. We're having to redraw bus routes," Ulmer said.

They are also working to clear access to all of their schools and repairing buildings that were affected by Helene, which specifically includes the road to Owen High School.

“Obviously the Owen district was hit very hard, and also part of the Reynolds district,” he said.

For Asheville City Schools, April Dockery, chief of operations, said that their only challenge is water as none of their buildings sustained any structural damage.

This has led the school districts to have different plans of action.

For ACS, their tentative plan is to reopen schools on Monday, Oct. 28.

For Buncombe County, they do not feel comfortable setting a tentative reopening date yet.

We don’t want to put out a date right now that we might be able to beat and we don’t want to put out a date that we might not be able to meet,” Ulmer said.

Ulmer said that once they get closer to completion on all repairs, accessing roads and technology, and as the city continues to work on restoring the water, they will feel comfortable putting out a date.

Once we have that non-potable water all the way across the county from Black Mountain to Candler, we do have a plan in place for potable water to be delivered to all of the schools,” he said.

Ulmer said they are also looking into possibly bringing in portable restroom trailers and handwashing stations if need be.

In the meantime, they have started extracurricular activities back up for high school students.

“We know that the storm impacted families in many different ways so participation is optional, but we did have families reach out asking if we could help return a sense of normalcy,” he said.

That especially applies to their seniors.

One Erwin High School student, Judah Dayton, said that he had been using his time away from school to help the community through this.

“I helped out in the Weaverville community handing out food, cooking food and passing food out in Black Mountain,” he said.

Dayton was very excited to be able to get back out on the football field, as this was definitely not the way he had expected his senior year to go.

“[I] got to live through the experience, I guess,” he said.

For ACS, Dockery said there is still a lot of work to ensure students and staff are ready to make the jump to return.

The good news was that as of Tuesday, Hall Fletcher and Lucy Herring Elementary Schools are the only schools in the district that still remain without non-potable water.

Dockery said that they are working closely with the county emergency team to bring in bottled water for students and staff. They are building up a stockpile right now to make sure that they have drinking water in place.

They are also working on a backup plan for Hall Fletcher and Lucy Herring if they do not get water, to allow them to open at the same time.

Dockery said that it is important to keep in mind that Oct. 28 is a tentative date, not an exact date.

We’re feeling more and more confident. We just can’t confirm that because as we’ve learned like so many other things you’ve got to be able to pivot and change your plans,” he said.

When the schools do open, they will have to start on a modified schedule to make sure they have enough water secured for every staff member and student.

Elementary schools will go from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and secondary schools will go from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

In the meantime for students, there is bridge learning happening at Isaac Dickson from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. for K-12th grades.

Ulmer said that BCS also has options for students right now; there are online learning opportunities for students who can access the internet. He also recommended having students read in the meantime.

With all of those bigger challenges that Buncombe County Schools is facing with the roads with 45 campuses, we hope to be able to have a reopening date very, very soon,” Ulmer said.