Fire at Frost Elementary School Under Investigation

The fire-damaged classrooms at Frost Elementary School were on display Aug. 1, where Linda Cobbe, a spokesperson for the Hillsborough County School District, said damages could be as high as $400,000.

The school is insured, she said, but lost among the rubble are years worth of school supplies obtained by kindergarten teachers Holly Cover and Jamy Daily-Herman, in whose connected classrooms the fire caused the most damage.

Cobbe said the fire remains under investigation and that it apparently started in the kitchen area of one of the classsrooms. "How and why, we don't know yet," she added.

The alam was received Saturday night, July 28, and school district officials became aware of the fire a day later, Cobbe said.

In all, 17 classrooms were affected in a two-story wing at Frost, with the bulk of the damages in the connected classrooms of kindergarten teachers Holly Cover and Jamy Daily-Herman. That's where the fire started, but smoke and soot damages were spread throughout the wing.

Ceiling tiles from all classrooms — the eight kindergarten units on the lower level and the fifth-grade classrooms upstairs — were removed and complete wipe-downs are being conducted, Cobbe said.

The Belfor property restoration company is on the job, "cleaning the duct work and wiping down everything," she sadded.

When school reopens Aug. 21, she added, students in the two heavily damaged classrooms will be taught together in another section of the school.

After the fire, Hillsborough County Commissioner Al Higginbotham, through his aide, Deanna Hurley, sent out an email to media, chamber and business interests to help raise support for the teachers who lost their supplies.

"Mrs. Cover and Mrs. Daily, are being supported by their co-teachers, who are asking the community for help," Hurley wrote.  "We have no involvement in this process; we just wanted to help to get the word out."

At the school Aug. 1 was Chris Smith, community relations manager for the Mosaic company and its FishHawk offices and Riverview plant. The company, she said, is going to make a $5,000 donation to the school.

Moreover, she said, employees every year participate in a back-to-school drive to collect school supplies for area schools.

"Because of the fire, we went to the employees and told them this is an urgent situation," she added. "Our employees typically are very caring and we're hoping we can help out both with a donation from the company and with our employees making school supply donations."

Melissa Stoevsand teaches at Frost Elementary, and in support of Cover and Daily-Herman posted word of their ordeal, and a plea for support, on the Adopt-a-Classroom platform.

"These ladies have been teaching for 17 years combined, thousands of dollars worth of personal materials were lost and the school district does not cover personal loss," she noted. "These two teachers are amazing. They need your help to rebuild their classroom resources in order to be able to reach all of the students in their classrooms."

Cobbe confirmed Stoevsand's report.

"We can't replace the supplies that the teachers bought for themselves," she said. "Teachers are always spending money on their own for supplies for the kids."

Tina Bell, Cover's sister, attested to that in a comment she posted to an earlier Brandon Patch report, .

So glad you got the information out there. My sister, Holly Cover, is such a wonderful teacher. She has spent thousands of dollars purchasing books and educational aids over the past ten years to enrich the lives of every student she has the privilege of teaching. She and Jamy have been co- teachers for the past three years and have put their hearts and souls into their students.

Frost Elementary School is a Title 1 school, which means it serves a large number of students who qualify for free- and reduced-price meals because of their families' incomes. The school, at 3950 Falkenburg Road, sits in Riverview but serves as well the Brandon area south of State Road 60 and north of Causeway Boulevard/Lumsden Road and west of Lakewood Drive/Providence Road.

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