LOGAN, W.Va. — A situation which started out as temporary will be made permanent in Logan County. Students at Logan Elementary School have been attending class at Logan Middle School ever since a fire in the aging building last February caused heavy damage. Now seven months later, Logan County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Sonya White said the decision has been made to not reopen the elementary school.
“It needed a lot of work prior to the fire and the insurance settlement won’t cover a lot of that,” said White.
She added it’s a 60-year old building and quite a bit of it would have to be completely redone. White added a brand new school building would cost tens of Millions and is out of the question. Therefore, they’ve decided to approach the state School Building Authority about potentially funding a renovation project at Logan Middle School where the students currently attend.
“We’re only at about 60 percent capacity in that building right now. So we’ve decided to seek funding from the SBA to completely remodel that Logan Middle building,” she said.
Logan Middle School was constructed in the 1990’s and is a much more modern facility. According to White, it was built for just over 1,000 students and currently has about 700 with the middle school and elementary school combined.
“To make it Logan Middle/Logan Elementary we want to make sure we have everything in place for our little guys like our pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms, plus do some remodeling that will provide better opportunities for the middle school kids like make them a really nice STEM lab,” she added.
White believed the school could be retrofitted to handle a lot more CTE classes like robotics, drones, and aviation programs.
“Once we make these renovations, get the teacher and principal input as we work with the architect, I think we’ll be able to design something really nice for the students,” White said.
She plans to make the pitch to the SBA in November.