(Avoca) Approximately 120 students at AHSTW will be displaced due to smoke damage in the district’s elementary pod.
Damage sustained Tuesday night to the Kindergarten, Transitional Kindergarten, and Pre-K area of the building will result in students and staff utilizing the AEA and Trinity Lutheran Church. Friday will be used as a moving day and classes will resume for those students on Monday. Wednesday and Thursday have been spent cleaning up and evaluating their options. “We really had no other choice than to look for other locations. Very appreciative of Trinity Lutheran Church and our AEA working with us to find those locations. Our community has been great in that regard. We know it has put an imposition on parents over the last couple of days especially with our Transitional Kindergarten, Pre-K, and Kindergarten classrooms. We are very thankful for the understanding and we are going to work through this as quick as we can.”
Superintendent Darin Jones is thankful for those that have aided the district through this process. “There are a lot of thank you’s that need to go out to the community. Both the Avoca and Walnut fire departments were here right away and were very attentive and helped us take care of the issue on Tuesday night.” Jones says, “Our insurance agent was down here. We had ServiceMaster here that night. We were very quick to moving forward.”
Ceiling tiles are being taken down in multiple classrooms to help remove the smell of smoke. “We are very fortunate there is no structural damage to the building. Right now it is smoke issues and we are working through that right now.”
The cause of the disruption was the overheating of an air return system. “It’s a fresh air unit. We haven’t done anything with it at this point in time. We have members of the state fire agencies coming to look at it tomorrow (Friday) and try to find the cause. Then we’ll work on replacement. It doesn’t have anything to do with our heating and cooling. It’s a fresh air return, so we’ll still be able to head and cool the building. We will move as efficiently as we can to get a new unit in place.”
Jones is hopeful to return students to their regular classrooms by April 14th. School resumed Thursday for students in first grade and above.
