{"id":395347,"date":"2026-09-10T01:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/395347\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T01:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:06:13","slug":"hillsborough-county-teacher-recovering-after-close-call-with-lightning-strike-during-dismissal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/395347\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillsborough County teacher recovering after close call with lightning strike during dismissal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9c3vgkv02asp9dy4.jpg\" alt=\"Teacher recovering after being struck by lightning \" class=\"sr-only\" data-v-892ef6a8=\"\"\/>    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9c3vgkv02asp9dy4.jpg\" alt=\"Teacher recovering after being struck by lightning \" loading=\"eager\" fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"vod-poster-image vod-poster-image--embedded\" data-v-5173a8d8=\"\"\/>    <\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">APOLLO BEACH, Fla. &#8211; A music teacher at Dorothy C. York Innovation Academy PreK-8 is recovering after a close call with a lightning strike during school dismissal Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>   The timeline <\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"WTVT\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-94395e58=\"\">What we know:<\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">Parents told FOX 13 that school pickup typically starts around 2:45 p.m.<\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">According to FOX 13 meteorologists, there were thunderstorms that had already developed a few miles north of Apollo Beach around that time.<\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">&#8220;These would be within the practical \u2018danger zone\u2019 for lightning to strike within,&#8221; our meteorologists added. &#8220;Minutes later, storms began building directly over where this incident occurred.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"WTVT\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-94395e58=\"\">What they&#8217;re saying:<\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">The district told FOX 13 it started lightly drizzling about 10 minutes into dismissal and that students were kept under a covered area.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">&#8220;The first sign of inclement weather was a lightning strike that hit near the front of the school,&#8221; Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) said in a statement. &#8220;The school paused dismissal immediately and brought everybody inside.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This resulted in a 25-minute dismissal delay, HCPS added.<\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">&#8220;We are told the teacher did not receive a direct hit but felt what he describes as a shock while holding an umbrella,&#8221; the school\u2019s statement said. &#8220;We are grateful that the teacher is okay and will be returning to school.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-v-94395e58=\"\">HCPS officials also emphasized that every campus across the district maintains specific rainy-day safety procedures tailored to its physical layout. Under district guidelines, dismissal is paused whenever severe weather threatens the area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"group-source-paragraph\" data-v-4fbf7207=\"\">The Source: The information in this story was gathered from official statements provided by Hillsborough County Public Schools and weather analysis from FOX 13 meteorologists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/us\/fl\/hillsborough\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-94395e58=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hillsborough County<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"APOLLO BEACH, Fla. &#8211; A music teacher at Dorothy C. York Innovation Academy PreK-8 is recovering after a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[47,629,115,135,137,136,628],"class_list":["post-395347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-fl","tag-hillsborough","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}