“I was shocked when I arrived to drop off my son for school and was told by the school guard that he would not be able to attend due to repairs that are going on at the school,” Hamad Al-Zahrani, a father of a fourth-grade student at a public school in Al-Safa District, told Arab News.

Furthermore, he added, the notice said it would take three months to complete the renovations. “I don’t understand why now is the time the school has to be closed for repairs,” another father asked the guard at the gate of the school, accompanied by his two sons. “Shouldn’t all of this work have been done during the three months of summer vacation?”

Another father of students at the school said he was told the students would be assigned a different school.

“I was told that the students would have to attend another school from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the afternoon, which is very inconvenient for me as I have been at work all day and now have to make extra effort to take my kids to school in the afternoon making the day more tiresome,” he said.

Normal public school hours are 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Other parents, instead of being greeted with maintenance signs, were surprised by their children’s schools had been moved without notification to an unknown location.

“I arrived this morning to drop off my daughters at school only to find the school closed and a small note on the door stating it had been moved. The problem is that the note did not give proper directions for the new location,” said Mazen Ahmedi, a father of third grade and fifth grade students at a public school in Rabwa District.

Still other parents were annoyed after dropping their kids off in the morning and receiving a call to pick them up two hours later due to repairs and classroom organization that was under way.

“The teachers and staff were called in to the schools a week-and-a-half earlier than the students in order to make sure the classes were organized and ready, and not to wait until the students have arrived in order for the staff to begin repairs and cleaning today,” said Maha H., a frustrated mother of a first-grade student at a public school.

Arab News attempted to contact the director general of Education Administration in Jeddah as well as other Ministry of Education officials in Riyadh, but was given no response or reason for the delays students are facing getting back to school for the semester.