Students headed to city school
Students from Summit Township Elementary School will attend Broad Street Elementary School starting Monday.
At an emergency school board meeting Monday night, the board asked district officials to seek permission from both the state Department of Education and the city to have the vacant building put back into service.
Tuesday afternoon the district announced that the approvals were in place and that district staff were beginning to prepare the building, arrange transportation and stock the school with needed materials to hold classes there.
A Summit project team was formed last week and is continuing to investigate problems with Summit Township Elementary School’s water system. Tests conducted last August indicated high levels of lead and copper in the water while a test conducted last week of untreated well water was positive for E. coli bacteria.
After the E. coli results came in, the district announced Monday night that classes would be canceled for the rest of the week. Students had only been back in the building for three school days after officials canceled school last week on Tuesday and Wednesday to install portable hand washing sinks and make arrangements for outside water to be used for sanitizing the kitchen and cafeteria.
In a statement Tuesday, Casey Smith, department of education deputy communications director, said the district’s request had been approved in the interest of the district addressing water issues while also allowing students to go to school.
“The district may work with the Department as necessary to ensure that the necessary 180 days of instruction are provided to students before the end of the school year,” the statement said.
District solicitor Tom King said that while most furniture had been taken out, the building has been nicely maintained and has not been renovated or used for any other purpose since the end of the 2014-15 school year when it closed.
City officials said they would honor the school’s old occupancy permit.
All of the utilities had been kept on, except the telephones. District maintenance personnel were doing thorough safety inspections including testing the water, which is not from a well.
“The water will be tested there tomorrow out of an abundance of caution,” King said Tuesday. “These kids have been through all this stuff at Summit, we want to be able to tell them that it’s safe at this building.”
William Pettigrew, head of the Summit project team, said the Broad Street school is roughly the same size as Summit elementary and it will be able to accommodate the more than 250 students from Summit.
Teachers reported today and were working with the building’s principal on classroom assignments and moving over materials, he said.
Maintenance personnel today were fixing the aluminum handrail outside the school, checking the building’s lights and getting ready to move desks.
Mayor Tom Donaldson said he was working with school officials and would issue an emergency proclamation to revert the street in front of the school back to one-way traffic.
The city fire department also was going to inspect the building to make sure it is still compliant with state Fire and Panic Act regulations.
“I emphasized to the people from Summit Township that we have a full-time police department, a full-time fire department, and that we have an ambulance service,” Donaldson said.
The Broad Street school was one of five elementary schools closed at the end of the 2014-15 school year as part of a consolidation plan. It is the only one that is available for use as an emergency school.
Clearfield Elementary School, Oakland Township Elementary School and Meridian Elementary School have all been sold or have buyers in place. Center Avenue Elementary School has been repurposed by the district as an alternative and special needs school.
Though the district had an agreement to sell Broad Street to The Arc of Butler County, a conditional use application was rejected by the city.
Eagle staff writer Aaron McKrell contributed to this report.
