CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Early January, when students are scheduled to return from the Christmas break, is the goal for having modular classrooms in place for the five schools in Nicholas County and Kanawha County that were destroyed in the June 23 flood.
“We understand that what they’re dealing with right now is not ideal, it is not a good situation and the folks from FEMA are saying the same thing,” said Scott Raines, director of school planning and construction for the state School Building Authority.
“Everybody is doing their very best to get these students into a more permanent temporary facility.”
On Wednesday, the Kanawha County Board of Education tentatively awarded a $2 million bid for modular installations at Bridge Elementary School, the planned temporary school site for students from the flooded Clendenin Elementary School.
Those students are being taught alongside Bridge students currently.
Bids, meanwhile, were still being accepted for the construction of the modular campus on Elkview Middle School’s grounds for Herbert Hoover High School.
Raines admitted a Jan. 2, 2017 completion date for that temporary campus was “ambitious,” but he said that’s the expectation in project details.
Since the start of the school year, Hoover students have attended classes at Elkview Middle School on a half-day schedule split with the middle school students after floodwaters from the Elk River destroyed the former Hoover campus more than four months ago.
“We’ve had to negotiate parking areas in order to get the flow of buses and cars and students and teachers around the portables at Elkview. We’ve had to deal with right of way issues with utility lines,” Raines said of the daily work on short-term school sites.
“Those are things that you have to do. You just can’t go out and plop portables down in an area.”
In Nicholas County, Raines confirmed utility installation was underway at Summersville Middle School with portables scheduled to arrive there next week. Bids for portable classroom buildings at Richwood High and Richwood Middle schools are scheduled to be opened next Monday, Raines said.
The original goal had been to have modulars in place for the five schools by December.
“We have to do everything in a certain order, in a certain manner so that the state and the local boards of education aren’t penalized once these funds from FEMA are received,” Raines said of the ongoing work.
In other parts of the country, past problems with process have forced state and local governments into FEMA repayments.
“Everybody is working as hard as they can,” Raines told MetroNews.
At this point, FEMA is slated to carry the bulk of the costs at 75 percent.
When it comes to permanent replacement schools, Raines said plans for direct relocations had not yet been finalized with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The “most likely” scenario, Raines said, would be construction of replacement school buildings.
“We’re trying to direct this to permanent relocation of those facilities,” he said. “We are still waiting on the final word as to whether or not those relocations have been approved by FEMA folks.”