(Lake Park)– A broken steam valve on the school’s boiler system means students at the Harris-Lake Park Elementary school will be attending classes in coming weeks in some temporary facilities. Superintendent Mike Thompson says it happened Friday and resulted in some significant damage. As of now he says they can’t even get into the building due to health and safety concerns…
“There’s some inspections that need to be done prior to anyone going back into the building, so we’re waiting on that, here. That will happen on Tuesday morning.”
In the meantime, Thompson says there will be no classes Monday and Tuesday, January 5th and 6th. Thompson says they’ll be meeting Monday morning with teachers and faculty. He says classes will resume on Wednesday with some alternative locations for elementary students…
“So we’re going to put our first grade through fifth graders in our current middle school-high school. We have enough capacity facility-wise to do that, and then our pre-school T-K and Kindergarten classes will go to the Presbyterian Church which is just about a block south of the existing middle school-high school.”
Thompson says the timing of the incident comes as they are just weeks away from moving into the brand new elementary building…
“We’re close, six to eight weeks out is what we anticipate to happen. That timeline might be moved up but at this point we’re anticipating a mid-February to the end of February move.”
Thompson says elementary students will remain in the temporary locations until the time comes to move into the new school.
Thompson says they’ve received an outpouring of support and offers of help from the community…
“Our staff have just been fantastic to work with, and by the way, so has our community. Lots of phone calls, lots of text messages and emails. Everything from trucks to trailers and just asking whatever we need, our community is here to help and we’re extremely appreciative of that.”
Thompson also thanked Elementary Principal Becca Matthiesen, Middle School/High School Principal Greg Hiemstra and Jared Rahe for their assistance in coming up with contingency plans.
