The Cullman County School System suffered millions of dollars of damage in Monday night’s storm, with Welti Elementary, the county bus shop and several vehicles receiving major damage from the hail. 

The Cullman County School Board held a special meeting Thursday afternoon to declare an emergency situation to make sure the repair process moves quickly.

Cullman County Schools Superintendent Shane Barnette said Welti had damage to the sides of the school along with the gutters and awnings, and will need the roof replaced.

Several other buildings on the campus also will need new roofs, he said. 

That will likely cost several hundred thousand dollars, and damage to the roof of the system’s bus shop and its vehicles will put the total cost of the damage in the millions, Barnette said.

The shop will need its roof replaced, and there were also 13 buses damaged, along with three totaled driver’s education cars and a truck that is likely totaled, Barnette said. 

One of the buses was already waiting to be repaired from an earlier incident, and it is likely the only bus that is totaled, he said. 

The County School System has close to 130 buses in total, and every high school always has a few spares, so routes were not affected by the damage to the buses, Barnette said.

“We were able to find spare buses at different places,” he said. 

Barnette credited the system’s transportation department for making sure that students were able to return to school Wednesday morning.

“They came right in early that next morning and started working,” he said.