by Jim Boyle
Editor
Elk River High School officials are considering their options for the start of the year as a team from the Institute for Environmental Assessments has been assessing the damage since an Aug. 10 storm put the brakes on a school expansion project.
An Aug. 10 rain storm has left Elk River High School’s gymnasium in disarray. Work on repairing it and other damaged parts of the school can’t begin until inspectors sign off and the school is given a clean bill of health.
School officials have learned they might not be able to occupy the A-wing of the building when school begins on Sept. 6, and once work begins to repair the gym floor, it will take five to six weeks to complete before it’s ready for action.
If that’s the case, lunch could be held at the Elk River Ice Arena and 1,700 students could be shoe-horned into the B- and C-wings until access to the A-wing is regained.
Another possibility would be to ramp up distribution of Chromebooks and train teachers of ninth- and 10th-grade classes to make use of Schoology as teachers of 11th- and 12th-grade classes did this past year.
“We would have to rearrange our workshop schedule to bring tech folks in to get our staff up to speed,” Elk River High School Principal Terry Bizal said. “We think the kids, quite honestly, would adapt quite well.”
The hallways on both the east and west sides of the gymnasium took on water on Aug. 10.
But these discussions are on the back burner as school and district officials focus on the safety of the building.
“We would like to go 100 miles an hour,” Bruce Watkins, interim superintendent of schools, said at an Aug. 15 work session of the Elk River Area School Board. “On the other hand, we don’t want seal up that building or start doing construction, later to find moisture, and we created our own nightmare.”
Some classrooms were impacted as the water came through ceilings.
Laura Masley, the Elk River Area School District’s operations manager tasked with health and safety, said right now the high school doesn’t have a mold problem.
“We have a water problem, and we want to keep it that way.”
As the Institute for Environmental Assessments has been assessing the damage, District 728 officials and contractors have been urging a thorough, well-documented process.
The institute has been using moisture mapping equipment and other tools to discern where water has traveled that can’t be seen by the naked eye to get a handle on what it will take to remediate the problem.
There has also been a mass effort to dry the building out with commercial fans and other apparatus.
Watkins pulled people together for the Aug. 15 work session and pointed out right away it was not a session to point fingers. That will come later, he said, and involve insurance companies, and perhaps attorneys, as it becomes clear what happened and who is responsible.
Among the work going on to expand Elk River High School is increased support on the roof which has fell victim to heavy snow in the past.
Another meeting with the Institute for Environmental Assessments, construction staff, contractors, school and district officials will take place Monday. This past week, efforts were also being made to assemble all parties who need to be plugged in, according to Robert Sehm, an associate with Wold Architects. That includes building inspectors, electrical inspectors and roof inspectors.
“This work has a lot of tentacles to it, so we’re assessing everything,” Sehm said.
“What’s important to reiterate is, is this is driven by environmental concerns and the remediation has to happen,” said Tom Baranick, the facilities manager for the Elk River Area School District.
Things could have been worse
A decision was made on the night of the Aug. 10 storm to empty garbage a couple of hours early. That put Keith Mathison, the nighttime lead custodian, and his partner in position to witness the problems emerge shortly after 7 p.m. that night.
The first sign of trouble was a single drop of water near a drinking fountain heard by one of the janitors. That would be an easy fix. A bucket underneath it, and go about your business.
Moments later, however, the rush of running water could be heard coming down the side of a brick wall that lined one side of the gymnasium. They raced to the other side of the gym to find just as much chaos.
Here’s one of the hallway entry points for water that ended up making its way into the gym and down into the lower level.
Mathison made his first phone call and mustered the rest of his energy in an effort to save the gym floor.
Water came in from the roof above the hallways on both the east and west sides of the gymnasium and near the main entry of the school where roofing work was taking place, Masley reported.
The immediate challenge became that there was not one central problem area. There were several places where the water was entering, and in some cases made its way to lower level of the school, impacting hallway ceilings, duct work and pipe insulation.
Construction crews have been addressing a need to bolster the roof’s ability to take on snow. The roof had sagged a few years ago when there was an extraordinary amount of snow one winter.
The assessment of damage started on Aug. 11 and has continued every day since, and the building has been monitored to see how it holds up in subsequent storms. It held up this past Tuesday’s storm, Bizal said.
“We’re nearing the completion of the assessment phase, but we need to know more about the outcome of the testing and the timeline it will take to occupy,” Watkins said. “It’s not that the building is closed and we’re not making process. We’re carefully considering the steps … to get a clean bill of health.”
School Board Member Jamie Plantenberg-Selbitschka thanked everybody for their thoughtful approach.