ELKVIEW, W.Va. — Members of the Kanawha County Board of Education plan to meet Wednesday to award a bid for portable classroom buildings at Bridge Elementary.
“Once that’s awarded, we’ll let the company know and then they’ll start bringing the portables in,” said Dr. Ron Duerring, superintendent of Kanawha County Schools.
Four months after the June 23 flood, Clendenin Elementary students are still at Bridge and Herbert Hoover High School students continue to share Elkview Middle School on a half-day schedule. Both Clendenin and Hoover were destroyed in the flood.
Portable buildings have been approved, but construction hasn’t started yet.
The school board was at Elkview Middle School Monday night to meet with the Local School Improvement Council for the Hoover attendance area.
The board holds LSIC meetings annually, but this year’s meeting was focused on the flood.
“There’s a lot of rumors out there and it’s very emotional. People get upset, so it’s important that they get the information from us and they get it correctly,” Duerring said.
The deadline to have the portables in place is Jan. 2, 2017, but Duerring said that date might be extended by another month.
Once the portables are at both Bridge and Elkview Middle, Duerring said it will help students and teachers get back on track.
“For Bridge, it’ll be less crowded classrooms,” he said. “For Hoover and Elkview, they won’t have to share a school and then they’ll go back to their all-day schedule, so with both schools we’ll be getting on a more normal schedule.”
Duerring told parents at the meeting they are still looking for land to construct two new schools for Clendenin and Hoover.