Damage to base school shifts classes

Students at the base's Primary and Liberty Elementary schools won't be starting classes tomorrow with everyone else -- as a result of a storm that damaged the Primary School last month.

The Primary School students (grades K-3) will begin classes Monday in the Liberty building, and the students in grades 4-6 that were scheduled to attend Liberty will attend classes at what had been the mothballed Stephensen Middle School.

The first day of school, like it is for all other students in the district when they report to class tomorrow, will be only half a day.

The problem began last month when a contractor was doing repair work on the Primary School roof. The contractor had replaced about one-third of the roof, and had pulled the rest of the roof off preparing to finish the task, when one of the rare July rainstorms struck.

The Primary School suffered severe water damage to the ceilings, carpet, tile and some moisture got into the walls, forcing the school district to open the walls in order to dry them out properly. Supt. Jerrie LeFevre said damage was estimated at $300,000 to $400,000. A disaster recovery company was brought in to help repair the school, he said.

"Our first concern was drying out the building, so we wouldn't have any mold or mildew isssues," he said, noting that the district has conducted an air sampling of the building to establish a baseline for samplings that probably will be taken for the next ten years to ensure students aren't exposed to any harmful mold or mildew. "Our number one concern is the safety of the students," he said.

After touring the school earlier this month, the board of trustees decided on Aug. 13 to spend the year repairing and remodeling the school and to move all Primary School classes into one of the other base schools.

The staff was notified on Aug. 16, and with the help of volunteers from the base assisting district personnel, began moving all the furniture and equipment. "We appreciate the airmen and parents on base who helped us make the move," LeFevre said. "We had a fantastic response." The district maintenance staff, he said, simply wasn't big enough to handle the move, by themselves, in time.

The two extra days before the start of start of classes on base is designed to help the faculty have some extra time to set up their classrooms properly.

LeFevre said both the Primary and Liberty students were being shifted because of the realities of each building's design to accommodate the specific age groups.

Simply moving the Primary students to Stephensen, which was mothballed two years ago by the district, wouldn't have been practical, he said. "If we'd done that, the (K-3) kids wouldn't have had any playground equipment, the counters in places like the library were too high, and the little kids couldn't reach the urinals."

Liberty was better suited in basic design for the younger students, and the older students could be accommodated by the design in Stephensen.

"We were lucky to have the extra building out there," LeFevre said. "If this had happened in town, we'd have had to double-shift students."

Stephensen had been closed two years ago because of declining attendance on base, but the district had maintained the building for the future when administrators anticipated it would again be needed.

The money to remodel and repair the Primary School is expected to come from an insurance settlement and by moving some budget items forward in the district's long-range plan.

Meanwhile, for the rest of the students in the school district, school began tomorrow with a half-day schedule. Preliminary attendance figures won't be available until next week but the district is anticipating about the same number of students as it had last year. After several years of rapid growth, attendance numbers began to flatten out 3-4 years ago, largely as a result of changing demographics on base.